


Never Meant To Die There

by skai_heda



Series: deep space [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst, Character Death, Doctor! Clarke Griffin, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Lexa (mentioned) - Freeform, Multi, Pilot! Bellamy Blake, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:07:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21741946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skai_heda/pseuds/skai_heda
Summary: "We're not meant to save the world," Abby tells him, after she sends Raven and Murphy away. "We're meant to leave it."Bellamy scowls. "We'll have to save it. There's no other option."Abby sighs softly. "Humanity was born on Earth, Bellamy, but it was never meant to die there."~the fate of humanity and its survival is at stake, and entirely in the hands of bellamy blake and his crew.Interstellar AU
Relationships: Abby Griffin & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake & Octavia Blake, Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Monty Green/Harper McIntyre, Octavia Blake & Abby Griffin
Series: deep space [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602634
Comments: 7
Kudos: 72





	Never Meant To Die There

**Author's Note:**

> guess who isn't dead????  
> sorry, i had finals and stuff and i've been busy and just UGH  
> some of you may remember that i published an interstellar AU a while ago and it very unfortunately got deleted, and, like an idiot, i did not remember to save my work. however, i finally got the motivation to rewrite this, so here it is—the hopefully better written interstellar AU for the 100. love you all, be well, be kind.

He can feel the sharp sweetness of the air encompassing him as his hand dances along the controls, a dashboard he knows even better than his own body. 

_I am not going to die here._

The cockpit starts to shake even more violently than before, promising death, but this is where Bellamy Blake feels alive.

_I'm not going to die._

The shaking intensifies, and a flicker of fear passes through him. The sky is vividly blue, so bright it begins to hurt his eyes. 

He loses control, and he hurtles towards the ground.

* * *

**dust**

* * *

"Bell. Bellamy."

His eyes snap open, his body aching from a collision that didn't happen. Octavia stands in the doorway with a blanket wrapped around her body, and even in the dimness of pre-dawn, he can see that she's shivering.

"Sorry," he mumbles. "Go back to sleep."

"Thought you were the ghost," Octavia mumbles. Bellamy tries and fails, for the umpteenth time, to explain that ghosts aren't real to the fifteen-year-old standing in front of him.

"There's no ghost, O," he finally says.

"Momma says that there could be one in the house."

"Mom's close enough to being one herself. Go back to bed."

"Were you dreaming about the crash?" she asks him, stepping closer to the bed. She's too smart for her age, too aware of the pain they've endured.

"Go," he says again, and she does.

* * *

"Nothing's working right in your damn house," Raven Reyes says, sitting cross-legged on the stool by the kitchen counter.

"Remind me when I gave you a key again," he says dryly, brushing dust off of his shirt. John Murphy tosses said key from hand to hand, completely unbothered by everything around him.

"You didn't," she says. "I took it. By the way, your combines are going absolutely haywire."

"Did you power the controllers down for a couple minutes?"

Raven rolls her eyes. "Obviously. But something's interfering with their compass. Magnetism or something..."

"You know what?" Bellamy says. "Let's go out today."

"And do _what,_ exactly?" Murphy asks. "Stare at the empty shelves in the grocery stores all day again?"

"Murphy," Raven interjects softly.

Bellamy stares at them for a long moment, and in that fraction of eternity they are all strangers congregated in one dusty kitchen, the only thing they share is the imminent possibility of their death. 

"Let's take a drive," he suggests.

* * *

"What's up with you today?" Raven asks, climbing up to sit next to him on top of the beat-up Rover.

"We’ve forgotten who we are, Raven. Explorers, pioneers. Not _farmers_."

"What else will we be, Bellamy?" she asks him. Somewhere in the distance, Murphy is whistling loudly as he walks along the edges of the corn crops. "We didn't run out of airplanes, or technological advancements. We ran out of food. And six _billion_ people are dead. Our only choice is to make sure the rest of us don't die out as well."

When Bellamy doesn't respond, she angles her body to face him, her leg brace clanging loudly against the roof of the car. "Look, Bellamy, I know you miss being up there."

 _Don't you?_ he almost says, but then he looks down at the brace on her leg, her own crash clanging noisily in her ears.

"Hey, guys?" Murphy says from below. "I hate to interrupt, but we've got a big one comin' in."

They all raise their heads to the impending wall of beige, of dust and dirt all swept up into an undefeatable monster.

"Oh, god," he mutters. _"Octavia."_

* * *

The girl herself is standing in front of their house, mask on and hands on her hips. 

"Get inside!" Bellamy yells, his voice muffled by his own mask. They all scramble in, and the four of them work to close all the doors and windows on the first floor.

"Did you close your room's window?" he asks, pulling off his own mask. Octavia stares at him for a long moment before allowing a long thread of cursing to bubble from her mouth. Bellamy just sighs and tugs gently on a lock of her hair before he sprints up the stairs and into Octavia's room. However, she catches up and makes it to the doorway of her room before him, and he watches her whole body stiffen. He carefully walks over to her and peers into the room.

Clouds of dust float lazily in front of his face, and Octavia slowly walks to the middle of the room, transfixed by the scene. Bellamy goes to shut the window, but as he's doing it, he notices the straight, thin lines of dust on the floor, gathering slowly.

"It's the ghost," Octavia whispers, bending down to stare at the lines of dust forming on the floor. "Dust doesn't fall like that."

"Get your pillow," he mumbles. "You're sleeping in Mom's room tonight."

"We don't even know if she'll get off of work before tomorrow!"

"You're still sleeping there," Bellamy insists.

He's still staring at the floor when Octavia leaves.

* * *

By morning, the dust has settled, and Bellamy finds himself back in Octavia's room. There are a few books missing from her shelf, maybe knocked over. He hears Raven and Murphy clattering around downstairs, having stayed the night.

 _Well, I hope they're making breakfast,_ he thinks idly as he rests his elbows on his knees, sitting cross-legged on the floor. A while later, Octavia joins him.

"It's not a ghost," Bellamy says. "It's gravity."

He fishes a coin out of his pocket and tosses it towards the lines of dust, watching it shoot towards one of the columns of dust.

"Murphy and I are driving back," Raven says, poking her head into the room. There are pancakes downstairs."

"And maybe you wanna clean that up," Murphy says snidely from behind her. "Once you're finished praying to it."

Without warning, Bellamy shoots to his feet and grabs a notebook lying on Octavia's table, opening it to a blank page.

"Bellamy, what are you doing?" Murphy asks.

"It's binary," he says, pointing to the lines with one end of Octavia's pencil before he starts to scribble frantically on the blank page. "Thick is one, thin is zero - it’s numbers... number pairs. _Coordinates."_

A look is exchanged amongst all of them, and it's that look that gets them all into a whole lot of trouble.

* * *

**headquarters**

* * *

The first thing Abby Griffin notices is that they're young.

The second thing she notices is that she recognizes them. All ex-candidates for the future of humanity; John Murphy, who she'd been training as a doctor before NASA was shut down, who had only been sixteen but could perform surgery better than any other doctor in the Midwest. Raven Reyes, one of NASA's most promising pilots, up until a crash had rendered her leg essentially useless. And then, of course, Bellamy Blake, who had also been a promising pilot until he left to take care of his family. 

On the monitor in front of her desk, she watches Bellamy stir, and several expressions flit across his face when he regards the rectangular robot standing on the other side of the table.

 _"How did you find this place?"_ it demands.

 _"Where's my sister?"_ Bellamy asks quietly. Beside Abby, Octavia lifts her head, ceasing her fiddling with the small model of the Hubble Telescope that had previously been sitting on the desk.

_"You had the coordinates for this facility marked on your map. Where did you get them?"_

_"WHERE THE HELL IS MY SISTER?"_ Bellamy's leaning over the table now, as far as he can go with his wrists still tied to the arms of the chair. He appears to size the robot up before leaning back, a smirk appearing on his face. _"You might think you’re still in the Marines, but the Marines don’t exist anymore. I’ve got things like you mowing my grass."_

_"How did you find us?"_

_"But you don't look like a lawnmower to me,"_ Bellamy continues nonchalantly. _"You, I’m gonna turn into an overqualified vacuum cleaner-"_

 _"No, you won't,"_ a voice says, and Abby watches her daughter stride into the view of the camera. _"TARS, back down, please."_

Bellamy stares at Clarke Griffin with a mixture of wonder, indignation, and surprise. _"You’re taking a risk using ex-military for security,"_ he says. _"They’re old, and their control units are unpredictable."_

 _"Well, it's what the government could spare,"_ Clarke says, coming to stand beside TARS.

Bellamy is silent for a minute before asking, _"Who are you?"_

_"Dr. Griffin."_

_"I knew a Doctor Griffin once,"_ he mutters. _"But he was a professor."_

Abby's heart jumps a little. _Jake._

 _"What makes you think I'm not?"_ Clarke asks, crossing her arms.

 _"And nowhere near as cute either,"_ Bellamy finishes with a satisfied smile. This evidently doesn't yield the reaction he thinks it will, however; When Clarke leans forwards and sets her palms flat on the table and direct her glare at Bellamy, real panic flashes in his eyes.

_"You think you can flirt your way out of this mess, Bellamy?"_

_"I think it's unfair that you know my name but I don't know yours, Princess."_

She leans back and draws herself up to her full height, and Bellamy's hands rise in surrender. _"Dr. Griffin, I have no idea what this mess is. I’m scared for my little sister and I want her by my side. Then I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Okay?"_

She considers this for a long moment before turning to TARS. _"Get the principals and the girl into the conference room."_ Then Clarke turns back to Bellamy. _"Your sister's fine. Bright kid. Must've been raised by someone smart."_

Both Bellamy and Octavia grin at that.

* * *

Bellamy follows every movement of hers carefully as he follows the doctor down a corridor.

"It's pretty clear you don't want visitors," he says conversationally. "So why don't you just let us go on our merry way?"

She sighs. "It's not that simple."

"Sure it is. I don't know anything about you or this place."

She turns around and smiles slightly at him as she pushes open a door. "Yes, you do."

 _"Bellamy!"_ a familiar voice yells, and Octavia barrels into him, hugging him tightly. Over her shoulder, he notes a familiar face... Professor Griffin's wife, the doctor who'd trained Murphy. A woman who incidentally happens to look like the firecracker blonde who escorted him here; probably her mother.

"Dr. Griffin?" he asks. Another professor.

"Take a seat," an Asian boy sitting at the table says, looking only a year or so older than Octavia. Beside him, a girl with hair the color of wheat and sharp hazel eyes looks half asleep, and she's sitting next to another young boy with an untidy mop of black hair. And a few seats over, Raven and Murphy, looking just as confused as he feels. Octavia goes to sit beside Murphy, and Bellamy tentatively sinks into a chair.

"Explain how a simpleton like you found this facility," the girl says in a bored voice.

"Harper," Abby Griffin's daughter says in a mildly warning voice, but her icy blue eyes are shining with amusement.

"Stumbled across it," Bellamy says tonelessly. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Murphy frowning at the table.

"You’re sitting in the world’s best-kept secret," the Asian boy says. "You don’t stumble in. And you don’t stumble out."

"Mr. Blake, please," Abby says. "Cooperate with them."

He glances at all the people around him, these people who are barely adults.

"It’s hard to explain," he says. "But we learned these coordinates from an anomaly."

"What sort of anomaly?" Harper asks.

He laughs slightly. "I don't want to jump to any conclusions here—"

"You're going to have to," the Asian boy says sharply. "Real soon."

"Easy, Monty," Princess says.

"It was gravity," Octavia blurts, and all heads turn to her as if she's said a magic word. Monty, meanwhile, looks like he's about to spontaneously combust.

"Where was this gravitational anomaly?" the messy-haired boy beside him says.

"Hey, it's cool that you guys are excited by gravity, but we're gonna need assurances," Murphy interjects, and Bellamy sees Raven pinch his arm.

The Princess tilts her head. "Assurances?"

Murphy leans over to place his hands on top of Octavia's ears. "That we're getting out of here, and not in the trunk of some car."

At this, the blonde laughs, and even Dr. Griffin smiles a little.

"What's so funny?" Raven asks, her hand still on Murphy's arm.

"Don't you know who we are, Bellamy?" Dr. Griffin says softly.

"No."

"NASA," Princess says simply. 

"NASA?" Bellamy repeats.

"NASA," she confirms. "Same one you flew for until you turned twenty-one."

After a long moment, Bellamy starts to smile, too.

* * *

"Relax, Raven," Murphy mumbles from beside her, but she's not going to listen to a stupid little bug like him. She's got questions, and she wants answers.

"I thought you guys got shut down for refusing to drop bombs from the stratosphere for population control," Raven asks Dr. Griffin. 

"When they realized that killing people wasn't a viable, long-term solution, they restarted us," she says, leading them through a maze of grey corridors.

"But why so secretive?" Bellamy asks. Something about his attitude mildly unnerves Raven; there's a vitality in him now that hadn't been there before. 

"Public opinion won’t allow spending on space exploration. Not when we’re struggling to put food on the table," Abby tells him. She ushers them into a small, lab-like room, displaying half-dead crops.

"Blight," Abby says. "We lost wheat seven years ago, and okra this year. And all that's left is corn."

"But we're growing more than ever," Murphy argues.

"Like the potatoes in Ireland, like the wheat in the dust bowl, the corn will die. Soon."

Through another door, the blonde one enters, talking animatedly with Octavia.

"We'll find a way," Bellamy insists. "We always have, haven't we?"

"Driven by the unshakable faith that the Earth is ours," Abby muses.

"Not just ours, but it _is_ our home," Raven says.

"Earth's atmosphere is 80% nitrogen," Abby tells them. "We don't even breathe nitrogen."

"But blight does," Murphy says softly, and Raven wonders how he knew that.

"Indeed," Abby sighs. "And so the last people to starve will be the first to suffocate." Then she looks directly at Bellamy. "Your sister's generation will be the last to survive on Earth."

"Tell me this is where you explain how you’re going to save the world," Raven murmurs.

* * *

"We're not meant to save the world," Abby tells him, after she sends Raven and Murphy away. "We're meant to leave it."

Bellamy scowls. "We'll have to save it. There's no other option."

Abby sighs softly. "Humanity was born on Earth, Bellamy, but it was never meant to die there."

She leads him into a chamber that he quickly realizes is circular, with a rocket on the bad down below. Bellamy stares for a long time at the ships attached to it, before he realizes that he recognizes them.

"Dropships," he murmurs.

"The last components of our one versatile ship in orbit, the Ark. Our final expedition," Abby murmurs.

"What happened to the other vehicles?" Bellamy asks, walking closer to the rounded banister that wraps around the inside of the launch chamber.

"The Lazarus Missions," she says, joining him.

"Sounds cheerful," he mutters.

"Lazarus came back from the dead."

"Yeah, but he had to die in the first place, didn't he?"

Bellamy stares for a while longer, trying to connect the dots, to process everything.

"You sent people out there looking for a new home..." he murmurs.

Abby nods. 

"There’s no planet in our solar system that can support life... and it’d take them a thousand years to reach the nearest star..." He turns to look at her. "Where _did_ you send them, Professor?"

"Bellamy, I can't tell you unless you agree to go on this mission." 

He feels vaguely like he's been punched in the gut. "I barely left the stratosphere."

"And this team's barely left the simulator. We can't program this mission from Earth, we don't know what's out there. We need pilots, doctors. We need you, and Raven, and Murphy. And this is the mission you were all trained for."

"Without ever knowing," he says. "An hour ago, you didn’t even know I was still alive. And you were going anyway."

"We had no choice. But something brought you here. They _chose_ you."

"And who the hell is 'they'?" Bellamy asks.

Abby remains silent.

"How long would I be gone?" he whispers.

Regret passes over her face, a startlingly humane expression. "Hard to know. Years."

"Mom can't take care of Octavia," he mumbles. "And I can't leave her."

"You should get out there," Abby says, glancing upwards, "and save her."

He considers this for real now, but despite the concerns about Octavia, he begins to feel the rush of air in a cockpit, stars exploding in his vision.

_Save her._

"Who's they?" he asks.

* * *

Mom told her about him a couple times, the pilot who left it all for his family. Clarke watches him carefully, from the moment he takes a seat in the conference room again.

"We started detecting gravitational anomalies almost fifty years ago. Mostly small distortions to our instruments in the upper atmosphere; I believe you encountered one yourself," Jasper Jordan says, directing his last statement at Bellamy.

All the color seems to drain out of Bellamy's face at once. "Yeah, uh, yeah. My last crash. Something tripped my fly-by wire..."

Beside him, Raven Reyes and John Murphy stiffen a little.

"Exactly," Harper says, gesturing vaguely at the screen. "But the most significant anomaly was this."

Monty clicks a remote, and it switches to a blurred image of a distorted figure hovering near familiar rings.

"So what are we looking at?" Murphy asks.

"A distortion of space-time out near Saturn," Clarke answers.

"Like... a wormhole?" Bellamy asks.

"It appeared 48 years ago," Monty tells him.

"And where does it lead?" Reyes asks. 

"Another galaxy," Jasper answers.

"Well, Jasper, we don't really know that," Clarke mutters under her breath.

"Wormholes aren't a naturally occurring phenomenon," Bellamy states, ignoring all of them.

"Someone placed it there," she says. 

"Clarke," Abby says softly. A warning.

Bellamy glances at her then, his eyes darkening. "'They.'"

"And whoever ’They’ are, they appear to be looking out for us," Harper tells him. "That wormhole lets us travel to other stars. It came along right as we needed it."

"They’ve put potentially habitable worlds within our reach. Twelve, in fact from our initial probes," Monty adds.

"You sent probes into it?" Reyes asks weakly.

"We sent _people_ into it," Clarke's mother says. "Six years ago."

"The Lazarus missions," Bellamy utters softly.

"Twelve possible worlds," Clarke murmurs. Twelve possible worlds. Twelve Dropship launches carrying the bravest humans ever to live, led by the remarkable Dr. White."

"Each person’s landing pod had life support for two years," Jasper says. "But they could use hibernation to stretch that, making observations on organics over a decade or more. Their mission was to assess their world, and if it showed promise, send a signal, bed down for the long nap, and wait to be rescued."

"And if their world didn't show promise?" Murphy asks quietly.

"Hence the bravery," Harper mutters.

"Because you don't have the resources to visit all twelve," Bellamy mumbles. Clarke begins to genuinely worry that he might throw up, judging by how pale he is.

"No," Jasper sighs, and he too is looking mildly uncomfortable. "Data transmission back through the wormhole is rudimentary, simple binary ’pings’ on an annual basis to give some clue as to which worlds have potential. One system shows promise."

"One?" Bellamy asks. "That's a bit of a stretch, isn't it?"

"One system with _three_ potential worlds?" Clarke asks him. "That's no stretch."

"And then when we get _there,"_ he pushes. "What then?"

She smiles softly. _"That's_ the long shot."

* * *

"This whole facility's a launch chamber," Bellamy says, staring at the curved walls. "Or, a vehicle... a space station?"

"All of the above," Clarke answers with a small laugh. "We've been working on it, and others like it for 25 years. That's Plan A."

"How's it even going to make it off the surface of the Earth?" Bellamy asks. He feels slow and stupid, even though he knows that very few people would actually be able to wrap their minds around everything that's happening here.

"The first gravitational anomalies changed everything," Clarke tells him, her long blonde hair swinging as she walks. "Suddenly we knew that harnessing gravity was real. So my mother started working on this equation; and we started building this station."

"You've got a lot riding on an equation you haven't solved yet," Bellamy sighs.

"And that's why there's Plan B," she says, her face sobering. She leads him to yet another laboratory, much more complex and high tech. They approach a large, glass-and-steel apparatus.

"The problem is gravity," Clarke continues. "How to get a viable amount of human life off this planet. Plan B's a population bomb; Almost five thousand fertilized eggs, weighing in at under 900 kilos."

"How would you raise them?" Bellamy asks.

"With equipment on board we incubate the first ten," she replies. "After that, with surrogacy, the growth becomes exponential; within thirty years we might have a colony of hundreds. The real difficulty of colonization is genetic diversity, but this," she says, indicating rows of vials, "takes care of that."

Bellamy stares at it all for a long time before asking, "So we just give up on everyone else down here?"

She smiles broadly. "That's why Plan A is a whole lot more fun."

* * *

Abby's aware of the way Bellamy glares at her back when she stands to face the chalkboard in her office.

"Where have you got to?" he finally asks.

"I'm almost there," she murmurs, staring at the equation. Jake's equation as much as hers.

"Almost?" he asks incredulously. "You're asking me to hang everything on an _almost?"_

"I'm asking you to trust me," Abby implores. "And to trust Jake."

"All those years of training," he murmurs. "And he never told me."

"We can't always be open about everything, Bellamy, even if we want to be. What about this mission will you be able to bring yourself to tell your sister?"

The silence that falls, then, is uneasy as he considers her words.

"Find us a new home," she says. "When you return, I’ll have solved the problem of gravity. You have my word."

It's a promise she feels like she's going to regret.

* * *

Octavia refuses to speak to him for the next few days, and it's absolute agony for both him and Aurora. Raven and Murphy can only watch him struggle with his choice; after all, neither of them had much to leave behind.

The day of his departure hurtles towards him like a summer dust storm, inescapable in his enormity. And with each passing day, Octavia gets angrier, more bitter, and Bellamy gets more desperate to tie up the loose ends.

 _Tomorrow,_ he thinks, the night before he leaves. _It'll be okay tomorrow._

* * *

He knocks. Once, twice, and then three times. 

When Octavia doesn't answer, Bellamy tries opening the door only to find something blocking it, but he manages to nudge it open enough to see the desk Octavia's moved in front of it.

"You have to talk to me," he murmurs, his throat rough. Silence. "I have to fix this before I go."

"Then I'll keep it broken so that you have to stay," she says, her voice cracking under the weight of the situation.

Bellamy sighs and pushes the desk so he can enter the room and sit down on Octavia's bed. She's lying under the covers, her only movement being a violent shudder of her shoulders whenever she chokes down a sob.

"Do you remember when you were born, O?" he asks softly. "Well, obviously you don't, but I do. I remember saying that I was never going to let anything bad happen to you, and believe me, Octavia, I'm doing this for you."

"That's bullshit," she says shakily. "That's absolute bullshit and so are you."

"Octavia..."

"I figured out the message," she says, abruptly sitting up and grabbing her notebook from her nightstand. "The books that were knocked over. It was Morse."

"O, please—"

"One word," she pushes. "And you know what it was, Bell? It was _stay._ It was 'stay,' Bell, it was _stay—"_

He pulls her close then, and he lets her sob uncontrollably into his shoulder.

"You'll be gone, Bellamy if you go, you'll be gone—"

"No," he insists. "No, Octavia, I'm coming back."

She lifts her head from his shoulder to stare at him. "When?"

The silence that follows is thousands of years long, even though it's really only a few seconds. Impulsively, Bellamy reaches into his pocket for two watches, handing her one.

"One for you," he states. "And one for me." Octavia holds it in front of her face, watching the face of it as it catches the sunlight streaming in through her window.

"When I’m in hyper-sleep, or travel near the speed of light, or near a black hole, time will change for me. It’ll run more slowly. When I get back we’ll compare."

"Time'll run differently for us?" she asks softly.

"Yeah," he murmurs. "Hell, when I get back, you and I might both be twice the age you are now—"

He notices almost immediately that he's made a fatal mistake, and Octavia's face contorts with confusion and anger.

"Wait," he starts. "O—"

"You have no idea when you're coming back," she says, shaking. "No fucking _clue!"_

With the last word, she hurls the watch at her bookshelf before burying herself under her blanket again. Bellamy shakes his head helplessly, his vision blurred with hot tears. "Octavia, don't make me leave like this."

She starts to cry harder.

"O..." he says weakly, his own body trembling with the force of holding his sobs back. "I have to go now, please."

Nothing.

He leans forward and buries his face in her hair, fully crying now. "Octavia, I love you. Forever."

He cries like a child, because in that moment he feels like a child, and in that moment he is the younger brother melting into the comfortable abyss of his sibling.

"And I'm coming back," he heaves. He can barely breathe, and it feels like there's a lump of wood in his throat. "I promise."

"Bellamy," she chokes out. "Bell, please."

He gets off the bed, aware of his heart shattering into a million pieces. A book falls from the shelf, but he barely registers it. "I promise," he repeats, backing out of her room. "I promise."

* * *

**the ark**

* * *

_"Stage one, separation."_

The force of the rocket vibrates in Bellamy's body, everything darkened by the mild tint of the visor of his helmet. Through the window, he begins to see the curvature of the Earth.

_"Stage two, separation."_

The rocket rips upward into the sky.

He glances around the shaking cockpit, at Green, McIntyre, Jordan, Raven, Murphy, and Clarke. The robot, TARS, angles towards him, noting the action.

"They're all here, Blake. Plenty of slaves for my robot colony," it says in a voice with a startling amount of human inflection. Bellamy pauses and stares at it blankly.

"They, uh, gave him a humor setting so he can fit in better with his crewmates," Jasper Jordan mutters. "He thinks it relaxes us."

"A big, sarcastic robot. What a great idea," Bellamy sighs, turning back to the controls.

"I have a cue light I can turn on when I'm joking, if you'd like," TARS says.

"Yeah, that'd be nice," Bellamy says absently.

"You'll even be later to use it to find your way back to the ship after I blow you out of the airlock."

Bellamy stares at it, and there's a beat of silence before a light at the corner of his screen turns on.

"And what's your humor setting?" Murphy asks, a grin evident in his tone.

"That would be a hundred percent, John."

"Let's take that down to seventy-five, please," Bellamy orders. Clarke laughs softly behind him.

* * *

She floats lazily through the Dropship, checking the docking mechanisms that'll allow the ship to latch onto the main ship, the Ark. But Clarke pauses at a window, mesmerized by the sight of the Earth, a vast and endless wall of blue.

"Don't worry, Princess, we'll get back." It's an arrogant drawl, scraping against the inside of her brain. The pilot. When she doesn't answer, he keeps talking. "It must be hard. Leaving everything. My sister. Your mother."

"We're going to spending a _lot_ of time together," Clarke blurts, putting as much contempt into her tone as she can. Sure, she was nice to him on the ground, but it's different.

Something about him makes her skin crawl, this big-headed idiot who knew her own father than she ever did. He was a walking, talking reminder of her greatest regret and source of anger.

And she hates him. She hated him from the moment her mother told her who he was.

"We should learn how to talk," he says, floating closer, answering her previous statement.

"And when not to," Clarke replies simply. She glances sideways at him. "Just being honest."

"Well, maybe you don't need to be that honest, Princess," he says, grinning before he turns to TARS. "Hey, TARS, what's your honesty parameter?"

"90%."

 _"Ninety?"_ Bellamy asks in disbelief.

"Absolute honesty isn’t always the most diplomatic, or safe form of communication with emotional beings."

Bellamy shrugs and glances back at Clarke. "Well. Ninety percent, Princess."

 _"Sixty seconds out,"_ Harper says over the radio. _"It's showtime, kids."_

The Dropships approach a ring module, fire retro-thrusters and slide gracefully into the center of the ring; the last piece of a large modular craft: the U.S.S. Ark. Four landers, including the other Dropships, are nestled inside the ring module. Monty floats up to them, his hands trembling at his sides.

"Come on, Monty," Clarke says softly. "You've done this a million times."

"Not with two real spacecraft," he replies, but he reaches for the controls by the door anyway.

"What's he trying to do?" Bellamy asks.

"Monty is going to lock this Dropship craft to the Ark Ring," Clarke says. "It's like putting two Legos together, but called docking."

Monty himself takes a little less then two minutes to successful dock the Dropship. An after that, they're floating through the threshold and into the Ark.

The lights slowly flicker on as they float through the cabins, powering everything on. TARS wakes its counterpart, CASE, before moving its rectangular body back towards the Dropship.

"Feels like a dream, doesn't it?" Bellamy asks as he joins Clarke in her slow floating journey back to the Dropship.

"Not really."

Bellamy chuckles under his breath, making his way back to the dashboard to flip a few switches. After a moment, the ship begins to rotate, generating gravity. Monty stumbles a little as he pulls his helmet off, shaking his head a little. Bellamy also pulls off his helmet, freeing a mass of mussed, messy curls. It's such an oddly satisfying feature about him that Clarke just stares at him for some time before realizing what she's really doing. Luckily, he doesn't notice.

"Doing alright, Monty?" Jasper asks from where he stands. 

"Yeah, man. Just need a minute."

"Yeah, well you look the way you did when you hit your head on the cabinet when we were six—"

"There should be some Dramamine in the pod," Murphy calls absently. He's another source of resentment for Clarke. Her own mother trained him to be a gifted doctor.

She's not jealous, necessarily. But something about it makes her heart ache, to be surrounded by all these people who got what she couldn't have.

* * *

 _"I miss you already,"_ Abby says from the monitor. _"Be safe, Clarke. And give Dr. White my regards."_

"I will, Mom." A few feet away, Bellamy's leaning against the doorway, staring critically at her mother's face.

_"Things are looking good for your trajectory. We're estimating about two years to Saturn."_

All the color drains out of Bellamy's face, and Clarke thinks about his little sister, the smart fifteen-year-old who had definitely been Clarke's favorite out of the Blake siblings.

"That is a lot of Dramamine," Monty says softly.

"Keep an eye on my family, ma'am," Bellamy cuts in, his voice soft. "Especially Octavia. She's a smart one."

 _"She and I will be waiting when you get back,"_ Abby promises, and Clarke glances away from the screen. _"A little older and a little wiser, but happy to see you return."_

* * *

Bellamy watches Clarke grab a blanket before activating her cryo-pod. Something's been off about her since their last call with her mother back on Earth, but Bellamy can't quite his finger on it. And he has no intention, either; to him, Clarke is just another privileged brat angry about interference in her perfect life. 

But he _does_ enjoy annoying her.

"So alone, yeah?" he says, sidling up to her.

"We've got each other," she says quietly, her movements mechanical. "Dr. White had it worse."

"I meant them," he says, pointing at the window, at the now small image of Earth, floating in the darkness of space.

"No," she agrees. "This isn’t like looking for a new condo; the human race is going to be adrift... desperate for a rock to cling to while they catch their breaths. We have to find that rock. Our three prospects are at the edge of what might sustain human life." Clarke grabs a tablet and shows him a blurry image of a dark blue planet. "Roan Azgeda's first. He started our biology program." She shows him a tiny red dot. "And Lexa Woods is here."

Bellamy hears something in her voice then, and decides to pick at it. "Tell me about Woods."

"Oh, uh, Lexa's a particle physicist," Clarke replies, her voice both fond and sorrowful.

"None of them had family?"

Clarke sighs. "No attachments. My mother insisted. They knew the odds against ever seeing another human being. I’m hoping we surprise at least three of them."

"Now tell me about Dr. White," Bellamy pushes. Clarke looks mildly annoyed with his tone, but doesn't object. Her mother probably forced her to play nice with him. So, Clarke just replaces the image on the screen with a grainy white orb.

"Remarkable," she says softly. "The very best of us. My mother's protégé. She inspired eleven people to follow her on the loneliest journey in human history.

"You know," she continues, "that’s what I love; out there we face great odds. Death. But not evil."

"Nature can't be evil?" Bellamy asks.

"Formidable, frightening," she replies softly. "But never evil. I mean, could humanity as a whole truly be considered evil after all it's done to survive?"

Bellamy pauses. Stares at her for a moment. "Just what we take with us, then."

Clarke turns back to her cryo-bed, preparing to sleep for the next two years. "This crew represents the very best of humanity."

"Even me?" he asks quietly. All the lies he's told his mother, told Octavia to keep them safe, the hours and hours of wasting time dreaming about things that he thought he'd never ever get again.

"You know what, we agreed. Ninety percent," Clarke says with a little laugh. Bellamy then glances out at space, at the small shape of the Earth, appearing to be spinning because of the space station's rotation. "Also, don't stay up too long. We don't have the resources. And if you do, then just remember, Blake," she sighs. "You are literally wasting your breath."

She lies down in her bed, and Bellamy is silent until the lid slides shut over her body, encasing her in a big, metal coffin.

"Show me the trajectory again," he says, turning to TARS.

"Eight months to Mars, then counter-orbital slingshot around—"

"Was Dr. Griffin and—" Bellamy starts to whisper, but the robot cuts smoothly across him.

"Why are you whispering?" it says loudly. "Clarke can't hear you."

Bellamy sighs through his nose. "Were Griffin and Woods close?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Is that a ninety percent wouldn't know or a ten percent wouldn't know?"

"I have a discretion setting, Bellamy."

"Yeah," he says, chuckling softly to himself. "But not a poker face."

* * *

Staring at the screen, Bellamy realizes that he truly doesn't know what to say.

"Hey, guys. I’m about to settle down for the long nap, so I figured I’d send you an update..." he starts, then shakes his head. "The Earth looks beautiful from here. Can't see any of the dust. And I hope you guys are doing okay. This should make it to you in one piece. Professor Griffin said she'd make sure of it. And... I guess I'll say goodnight."

* * *

**the house**

* * *

Octavia sees two vehicles cruising towards her house, sending up plumes of dust. Behind her, her brother's best friend Nathan Miller, and her mom stand with their arms crossed.

"Is it him?" Octavia asks softly. 

"Don't think so, Tavia," Miller says quietly. From the first car, which is towing the second, Abby Griffin gets out, looking tired.

"You must be Aurora," she says pleasantly, addressing Octavia's mother. "Hello, Octavia."

"Why do you have my brother's Rover?" she asks, her hands trembling.

"He wanted me to bring it back for you," Abby says. "And he has a message—"

Octavia spins on her heel and faces the door, her chest heaving. Nathan steps closer to her, laying a hand on her shoulder. "She's pretty upset with him for leaving," he says reproachfully.

"If you record messages," the professor says. "I can send them to him."

Out of the corner of her eye, Octavia sees her mother nod.

"Octavia is a bright spark," Abby says conversationally. "Maybe I could fan the flame."

Aurora ignores this. "Where's my son?"

"Heading towards Mars," Abby replies, and something inherently childish in Octavia rebels against that, refuses to embrace that impossible possibility.

_He can't be that far away._

"Next time we hear from Bellamy," the professor says. "They'll be coming up on Saturn."

* * *

**saturn**

_two years later_

* * *

_"But, you know, they've got me climbing the ranks at NASA's agricultural division. I guess your professor friend likes all of your friends. But uh, yeah. I've gotta go. Talk to you later, shithead."_

Bellamy watches his friend get up and leave, and after a moment his mother settles in the seat Miller just left.

 _"Sorry, Bellamy,"_ she says. She looks even more grey than before. He wonders vaguely if she still works long hours, still ignores Octavia, still runs from everything. _"I asked Octavia to talk to you, but she's about as stubborn as her big brother. I'll try again next time. But in the meantime, you stay safe up there, okay, Bellamy? I love you."_

The message ends, and Bellamy feels a vague wave of disappointment. 

But he knows it's what he deserves.

* * *

He finds Monty sitting in his cabin, staring at his notebook.

"You good, Monty?"

"It gets to me, Bellamy," Monty says softly, banging lightly on the metal walls with his fists. "Millimeters of aluminum, that's it. And then nothing within millions of miles that won't kill us in seconds."

Bellamy nods sympathetically, going to sit next to him on the small cot.

"A lot of the finest solo yachtsmen don't know how to swim," he tells Monty. They knew if they went overboard that was it, anyway. This is no different."

* * *

Bellamy makes his way through the station, eventually going to Harper. She's flicking through images of star-fields, distorted as if through a fish-eye lens.

"Those from the relay probe?" he asks.

"It was in orbit around the wormhole," Harper explains. "Each time it swung around we got images of the other side of the foreign galaxy."

"Like swinging a periscope around," he muses.

"Exactly like that," she replies, shoving his shoulder lightly.

"So we've got a pretty good idea of what we're gonna find on the other side, right?" Bellamy asks her, and Harper raises her eyebrows, tilting her head. "Navigationally," she says.

"We'll be coming up on the wormhole in less that forty-five minutes," Clarke says, approaching them. "Suit up."

"Gotcha, commander," Harper says, grinning, and Clarke leaves with a roll of her eyes.

"Hey, Bellamy," Monty says, appearing behind Harper. "Can you kill the spin?"

"Killing the spin," Bellamy replies, going over to the main controls to stop the station's rotation.

* * *

"There!" Jasper exclaims. "There it is!"

Bellamy looks up from his suit to see a spherical blur of stars, getting larger and closer.

"It's a portal," Monty says softly, and Bellamy raises his eyebrows. "It's cutting through spacetime. We're seeing into a galaxy so far away we don't even know where it is in the universe."

The thought makes him feel awfully small, and largely insiginificant. The blur is beautiful, stars and nebulae stretched into a dazzling array of shimmering lines and waves.

"It's a sphere," he says finally.

"'Course it is," Harper states. "Did you really think it would just be a hole?"

"Well, that's just what it shows in all the illustrations," he says softly.

"In the illustrations they're trying to show you how it works," Raven says, already suited up and at the copilot's seat. "So to easily show three-dimensional space, they've turned it into two dimensions. A circle. A a circle in three dimensions is...?"

"A sphere," Bellamy mutters. "Right."

"A spherical hole, so to speak," Monty says softly, going silent for a while and leaving Bellamy to contemplate this, to marvel at the looming sphere. "But who put it there? Who do we have to thank?"

"I'm not thanking anyone until we get out of there in one piece, Monty," he says sullenly, thinking of Octavia. Octavia, who would be seventeen by now. 

Does she think that he's dead?

"You guys ready?" Clarke asks, strapping into her seat.

"Yeah, if Bellamy and Monty could just take a seat," Murphy mutters, and Bellamy flips him a heavily gloved bird before strapping into his seat. He carefully takes the station towards the wormhole, his blood traveling through his veins like an electric current. His breathing is slow and steady, and he's the only one.

"Any trick to this?" Raven asks Jasper.

"No one knows," he replies.

"But the others made it, right?" Murphy cuts in, his voice trembling just slightly.

"Some of 'em."

"Appreciate the confidence boost, Jasper," Bellamy sighs. "Everybody ready to say goodbye to our solar system?"

"To our galaxy," Monty says faintly.

Bellamy pushes the sticks forward, nosing down and letting gravity pull them towards the center of the wormhole.

* * *

**the wormhole**

* * *

The Ark reaches the surface of the wormhole, and as it crosses the threshold it becomes apparent to Clarke that there is no surface. The craft simply passes into the space of the distortion, its own warped reflection flickering towards it as if the ship were leaning into a giant shaving mirror. Bellamy, Jasper, Raven, and Murphy keep their eyes firmly glued ahead, while Clarke, Harper, and Monty glance at the walls of the cockpit.

A space beyond the three dimensions.

The Ark moves through a tunnel of distorted reflections, seeming to gather more and more dizzying speed, but getting no closer to the far mouth, as if on an accelerating treadmill. Up ahead, Bellamy and Raven check their instruments.

"That won't help you in here," Jasper says over the roaring of the wormhole and the shuddering of the cockpit. "We're cutting through the bulk. All you can do is record and observe."

Clarke jumps when a blurred shape appears next to her, warping to form ripples of spacetime within the cabin itself.

"Anyone wanna tell me what the fuck that is?" Murphy asks, panicked.

"It's them," she says easily, before her brain can process the words. Somehow, deep in her heart, she knows. She knows, and that's why she reaches out to touch the warped space. Her fingers start to bend and blur, but she feels no pain. She's aware of everyone else in the cockpit screaming at her to put her arm down, to stop, but the ripples disappear, and her hand returns to the way it was before.

The mouth of the tunnel streaks towards them, and as the Ark slides out of the wormhole, the instruments begin to chirp.

"We're here," Bellamy says, with all the nonchalance of having announced his presence to his own house.

* * *

**the water**

* * *

Bellamy finds that he can't look at the window for too long, because then the nets of nebulae and the blankets of stars will bury themselves into his vision, and that's all he'll see even when he glances awy from the window. Right now he settles for watching Harper, who is calling up data from a workstation connected to TARS.

"All our lost communications came through," she tells him.

"How?" Bellamy asks.

"The relay probe on this side cached them," she explained. "Years of basic data, no real surprises. Azgeda's site has been sending a thumbs up for years, as has Dr. White's. But Woods went down three years ago."

Bellamy glances at Clarke, who's porcelain skin goes whiter than a sheet. "Transmitter failure?" she asks.

"Maybe," Harper concedes after a moment of tense silence. "She _was_ sending positive signals until it went down."

"Azgeda still looks good, right?" Jasper asks.

Harper nods. "The planet's coming up fast, but with one complication. It's much closer to Sanctum than we thought."

"Sanctum?" Bellamy asks.

"A very large black hole," Monty explains. "Both Azgeda's and White's planets orbit it."

"And Azgeda's is on the horizon," Clarke murmurs.

"Like a basketball around the hoop," Harper agrees. "Landing there takes us dangerously close. A black hole that big has a huge gravitational pull."

There's a pause, broken by Raven. "Why does everyone look like someone died? Look, we can swing around the neutron star to deaccelerate..."

"That's not the problem, it's time," Murphy mutters. "That gravity will slow our clock compared to Earth’s. Drastically."

Bellamy's stomach drops. "How bad?"

"Every hour we spend on that planet will be... about seven years back on Earth," Monty says, doing the calculations quickly on the notepad on his lap. Bellamy puts his face in his hands, and someone squeezes his shoulder.

"Well, that's just relativity, boys," he hears Jasper say.

"Bellamy, we have a mission," Clarke whispers, and her voice scrapes against the insides of his brain like nails on a chalkboard. 

"That's easy for you to say," he spits.

"You have no idea what's easy for me," she shoots back, her voice eerily calm. She waits for a moment before addressing everyone else. "Either way, Bellamy's right. We have to think of time like a resource, like food or oxygen. Going down there is going to cost us.

"Look, Dr. White's data looks promising, but we aren't going to get there for months. Woods is even further," Raven reasons with a glance at Clarke, having picked up on the existence of some history between the two. "Azgeda hasn't sent much, but what he has sent is promising. Water, organics..."

"You don't find that everyday," Clarke says.

"No, you don't, so think about the resources it would take to come back here," Harper finishes, crossing her arms. The crew exchanges glances, considering.

"How far off from the planet do we have to stay to avoid the time shift?" Bellamy finally asks, once he's sure he won't throw up as soon as he opens his mouth.

"Just back from the cusp," Monty says, indicating a spot on the whiteboard hanging from the roof, showing a crude illustration of Azgeda's planet and the black hole.

"Right, so track a wider orbit of Sanctum," Bellamy says, grabbing a dry erase marker and drawing a few lines of his own, "parallel with Azgeda’s planet but a little further out ... take a Dropship down, grab Azgeda and his samples, debrief and analyze back here."

Clarke nods. "That'll work."

"There will be no time for bullshit or monkey business down there, so TARS, you better stay here," Bellamy says, getting to his feet. "Who else wants to wait?"

"If we're talking about a couple of years, Monty and I could stay and research the black hole," Harper proposes. "Use that time to work on gravity. That data's gold to Professor Griffin."

"I'll stay, too," Murphy pipes up. "I'll be waiting to analyze the data." Raven looks mildly uncomfortable with the thought of leaving Murphy, but she keeps her mouth shut.

"Okay," he says, nodding. "TARS, factor an orbit of Sanctum; minimal thrusting, conserve fuel, but stay in range."

"Don't worry," TARS says dryly. "I wouldn't leave you behind... Doctor Griffin."

Clarke smiles.

* * *

Seated in the Ranger cockpit, Bellamy gazes in awe at the black hole. It's a mass of black, ringed by two golden belts wrapping horizontally and vertically around the sphere. The event horizon.

"Literal heart of darkness," Jasper says, tracing Bellamy's gaze to Sanctum, before pointing to a small, glowing dot near it. "And then there's Roan Azgeda's planet."

Bellamy turns to CASE, TARS's much calmer counterpart. "Ready?" he asks.

"Yup," it replies tersely, concisely. Like TARS, its inflection is human, but it seems more like what it is; a machine.

"Don't say much, do you?" Bellamy murmurs.

"TARS talks plenty for both of us."

"That he does," Bellamy agrees, before looking at Clarke. "Detach?"

"Detach," she confirms.

He flips a switch, and he feels the Dropship falling away from the Ark, hurtling towards Sanctum. He's in awe of the pull that drags towards the blackness, and for a moment he lets himself contemplate what would happen if he truly let himself be pulled into the black hole.

"Hey, Monty," he says into his radio. "You getting these forces?"

 _"It's unbelievable,"_ Monty replies. _"If we could see the collapsed star inside, the singularity... we could solve it. The equation."_

Bellamy stares at the eerie blackness. "And there's no chance of getting anything from it?"

 _"Nothing escapes that horizon,"_ Harper says ominously. _"Not even light._

 _"The answer's there,"_ Monty says, _"but there's just no way to see it."_

* * *

Clarke glances over at the pilots, studying their trajectory. Raven tapping her fingers against the armrest of her chair, and her brace occasionally clangs against the seat.

Abby told her that Raven had a nasty crash when she was about eighteen, sending shrapnel into her spine. Clarke's mother had been able to get it out before it caused too much damage, but Raven's leg would never be the same again.

Clarke wonders vaguely if Raven's really okay with being here, after the damage it's caused.

"This is pretty fast for atmospheric entry," CASE cautions. "Should we use the thrusters to slow?"

"We're gonna use the Dropship's aerodynamics to save the fuel," Raven says easily, supremely unbothered. Clarke decides that she likes her after all.

"Uh, do you mean the _air brake?"_ Bellamy asks in disbelief, and Clarke resists the now familiar urge to smack upside the head whenever he speaks in that tone of his. 

"We wanna get there fast, don't we?" Raven counters, grinning.

"Actually, we wanna get there in one piece," Clarke mutters, but she and Raven exchange a grin nevertheless.

"Reyes, Griffin, Blake, Jordan, get ready," CASE says, and they all strap in. As the Dropship hurtles towards the stratosphere, it starts to howl and shake. Clarke studies the curving horizon.

"We should ease..." Bellamy mutters, but there's a manic sort of excitement in his eyes as well.

"Only time you and I ever went down was a machine easing at the wrong moment," Raven insists, keeping her eyes forward.

"A little caution," CASE says.

"Could get you killed!" Bellamy shoots at him this time. 

"You're going too damn fast, Reyes!" Jasper yells.

"I got this," Raven says, then starts to chant it under her breath like a prayer she's clinging desperately to. "I got this."

Bellamy's knuckles are white on the controls.

"Should I disable the feedback?" CASE asks.

"No," Bellamy murmurs. "No, I need to feel the air."

Clarke remembers her pilot training, a short little break from the medical procedures. She remembers the rushing, swooping feeling in her gut, the exhilaration, and she imagines that Bellamy and Raven feel ten times as much as that when they're in the air.

The Dropship cuts through cloud formations, and through the window she sees a solid sheet of glittering blue. An endless ocean.

"It's just water," Jasper says unnecessarily.

"Stuff of life," Clarke murmurs.

Raven banks sharply, eases down. The sleek, silver form of the Dropship extends several, spindly metallic legs that disappear into the water to allow the Dropship to land.

"It's shallow," CASE reports. "Feet deep."

"Real graceful," Clarke mutters, still jolted by the impact of the landing.

"But very efficient," Bellamy counters. She can practically hear the smirk in his voice. "What are you waiting for? Let's go, go!"

Clarke and Jasper clamber out of the Dropship and into the water. Being there awakens faint memories buried deep within her conscience, beaches in California and a faded image of her father's face.

CASE climbs out of the craft, tracking Azgeda's beacon. Surrounding Clarke and Jasper however, it is nothing but ocean, not a sign of life or even wreckage of the old Dropship models.

"This way," CASE finally says. "About 200 meters."

Clarke peers into the distance, Smooth, ankle-deep water to the horizon, where a distant mountain range looms. They start splashing towards it in their heavy spacesuits.

"Gravity's punishing," Jasper mutters.

 _"Been floating through space too long?"_ Raven asks through the comm link. Clarke knows Raven wouldn't mind the floating; in the long conversations they've had on the ship, Clarke's learned that zero-gravity is Raven's favorite condition.

"Gravity here is about 130% of Earth's gravity," CASE states.

 _"Love the small talk, but can we focus?"_ Bellamy asks impatiently. Clarke only rolls her head and pushes onward, eventually getting ahead of Jasper. CASE stops abruptly, causing Clarke to almost fall into one of its long, rectangular legs.

"Should be here," it says, confused. Instead, more ocean.

She scans the shallows for any piece of metal, parts of a spacesuit, anything. "If the signal's coming from here..."

CASE drops to its knees, thrashing under the water.

 _"Hell is he doing?"_ Jasper asks over comms. Meanwhile, the mountain appears to approach them. 

CASE finally wrenches a badly damaged piece of equipment from the seabed, and Clarke's blood runs cold.

"That's Roan's beacon," she whispers.

"It's wreckage," CASE agrees. "But where's the rest?"

She glances to the side, and begins making her away towards the rising hills. "Towards the mountains."

 _"Clarke,"_ Bellamy says, and it sends a shiver down her spine, as if he's speaking directly in her ear. Which, in a way, he is. _"Those aren't mountains."_

_So what the hell could they be?_

Bellamy appears to read her mind, and answers her question before she can even ask. _"They're waves."_

For the first time in a long, real panic starts to pulse in Clarke's brain, before attacking every other cell in her body. A part of her brain screams for her to run away, but she ignores it.

 _"Clarke, come back here right fucking now!"_ Bellamy screams, but rather than commanding, he also sounds as panicked as she feels.

"No!" she chokes out, still going towards the waves. "We need his data!"

_"Damn it! CASE, go get her! Griffin, you get your ass back to the Dropship!"_

"We're _not_ leaving without the data!" Clarke screams, pushing forward.

_"You don't have time!"_

"Clarke, let's go!" Jasper screams from behind her, having caught up. "Clarke!"

She tries to pick up another discovered piece of wreckage. Her effort is soon pointless; she drops it and moves on.

But then she looks up, and the wave looks a lot closer.

"Bellamy," she says shakily, her whole body trembling. "Bellamy, go, I won't make it, go!"

_"Yes, you will."_

Clarke watches CASE racing towards her, Jasper scrambling towards the Dropship.

_"Clarke, get up!"_

She tries to move her foot, but she discovers that it's stuck under the wreckage she dropped.

"Shit," she mutters to herself. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, _shit! BELLAMY, GO!"_

She's suddenly aware of being lifted in the air, the planet's gravity resting on top of her like a heavy blanket. CASE holds her in its metallic arms and begins to careen towards the Dropship.

It seems like years, but CASE finally shoves Clarke through the open hatch before it gets in. Jasper attempts to climb in, but then he's swept away by a wall of water. Distantly, Clarke thinks she hears Bellamy screaming. She thinks she's screaming, too.

"Shut the hatch!" Bellamy shrieks. CASE obliges. "Raven, take the controls!"

And that's all he's able to say before the Dropship is swept away by the massive wave.

* * *

CASE is able to protect Raven from flying objects with it's arms, but Clarke isn't so lucky. She slams into a wall, and then into Bellamy, who automatically wraps his arms around her and pulls her close. Together, they are thrown around the cockpit while Raven attempts to keep the ship from sinking, and Bellamy buries his face in the space between her helmet and her shoulder. There's a horrible swoop in her stomach when they go down the wave, and she keeps her eyes tightly shut until the Dropship finally starts rattling.

When it comes to rest, Raven fiddles with the controls, desperately powering up the electrics. The engine, however, refuses to respond.

"It's too waterlogged," CASE states. "Let it drain."

"God _damnit!"_ Bellamy roars, slamming the ground with his hand. Clarke is now sitting in his lap, shaking with fury at herself and him.

"I told you to leave me," she chokes out.

"And I told you to get your ass back here!" Bellamy screams. "You could've _died,_ Clarke! And this shows that only one of us was thinking about the mission!"

"The only _fucking_ thing you were thinking about was getting home!" she yells, even louder than him. Sobs start to tear through her body, an unstoppable force. "I was trying to do the right thing."

"Can you tell that to Jasper?" Bellamy asks, his voice uneven. His hands are on her shoulders, squeezing tightly.

"How long to drain, CASE?" Raven whispers.

"Forty-five minutes to an hour."

Bellamy shakes his head, yanking his helmet off, and then Clarke's. His curls are all over the place, plastered to his forehead, hanging in front of his eyes.

"What is this gonna cost us, Clarke?" he asks, his voice dangerously calm.

"A lot," Clarke murmurs. "Decades."

She watches him try to process this, his mouth opening and closing. "What the hell happened to Azgeda?"

"Judging by the wreckage, he was broken up by a wave soon after impact," she says blankly. 

"So how'd the wreckage stay together all these years?" he asks.

"Because of the time slippage," Clarke says, swallowing. "On this planet’s time, he landed here just hours ago. He might’ve only died minutes ago."

Her voice cracks, and she looks down, her hair falling in front of her face. "The data that Jasper received was just the endless status, echoing endlessly.

"We're not prepared for this," Bellamy gasps, taking shuddering breaths.

"I'm counting every second, Bellamy," she says softly, warm tears on her face. "Same as you."

His hands, which are on her arms now, tighten again.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I screwed up. But you knew the risk with relativity."

"My sister," he starts shakily. "Was fifteen years old. I wasn't there to teach her how to drive. I wasn't there to teach her Einstein's theories."

Clarke pulls off her gloves, and puts her hands on Bellamy's cheeks. It's an alarmingly bold move, and definitely out of character for her. It's achingly tender, sweet, and loving, everything that the two of them are not.

"Bellamy," she whispers, tracing his freckles with her fingers. He doesn't move. He just stares into her eyes, his face unreadable.

"How long for the engines, CASE?" Raven asks abruptly, and Clarke leans away, having just remembered her presence.

"A minute or two."

"We don't have it," Raven groans. "Got another wave coming in!"

"Strap in," Clarke says briskly, clambering off of him and pulling her helmet back on. Raven flips a few switches that spark the engine. There's a fiery blast, and it sends the Dropship rocketing upward.

* * *

**the aftermath**

_seventeen years later_

* * *

Harper and Monty were eighteen years old when they left for Azgeda's planet. Now, they seem to be twenty-eight, their hair streaked liberally with grey.

"Hey," Bellamy whispers. His heart pounds.

"We've waited years," Monty says quietly. His fingers are interlocked with Harper's.

"How... how many?" Bellamy whispers.

"By now, it must be seventeen years, four months, and eight days," Harper responds.

He turns away. Distantly, he feels Clarke's hand on his back.

And nothing in his mind tells him to push her away

"And Murphy?" Raven asks.

"Been sleeping since you left," Monty tells her. "Where's Jasper?"

Now Bellamy turns away, starting to walk away from the airlock.

"I thought I was prepared," he hears Clarke say. "I knew all the theory. Reality’s different."

Monty and Harper are silent for a moment, digesting the news. "And Azgeda?" Harper asks.

Clarke sniffles softly. "There's nothing here for us."

"Why didn't you guys sleep?" Raven asks.

"We did a couple of stretches," Harper murmurs. "But we stopped believing you were coming back, and something seems wrong about dreaming your life away. We learned what we could from studying the black hole, but we couldn’t send anything to your mother. We’ve been receiving, but nothing gets out."

"I'm gonna go wake Murphy," Raven mutters, hobbling away.

"Is she still alive?" Clarke asks.

One of them must nod, because Bellamy hears her sigh in relief. 

"Bellamy," Monty says. "We've got years and years of messages stored."

* * *

_"Messages span seventeen years."_

"I know," he tells the machine. "Start from the beginning."

* * *

Miller, still twenty-four, stares at the camera for a moment before pulling off his beanie. _"Hey, Bellamy. Been pretty boring around here. I imagine you're having fun up there, yeah? Space and stars and shit I never understood. Uh, your mom's sick, but hopefully she'll get better. And, uh, Octavia is still, well, Octavia. She stole the Rover and she crashed it. But she's okay. The Rover is, too. More or less. I tried to get her to talk to you, but uh, she's still angry. Bitter. All the time. But it's gonna be okay, at some point. When you come back, she'll realize that all of that anger was for nothing."_

* * *

It's his mother this time.

 _"I'm afraid I'll have to start with the bad news,"_ Aurora says. _"But, uh, Gina died."_

Bellamy feels a dull ache in his heart. He and Gina had dated for a while, and he loved her with his whole heart, until she decided that it was too much responsibility for her to be with him and take care of her family as well.

Gina.

How he loved her.

And she's dead.

Bellamy starts to cry.

_"Don't know if Nathan told you, but Octavia crashed the Rover. She's fine. She's actually studying with that professor of yours; Griffith or someone. She's angry, Bell. She hates me and she hates this house and she acts like she hates you, but I know she doesn't. I know she misses you just as much as I do. Bellamy, do you remember when I used to read you that Greek mythology book when you were a toddler? Oh, you loved that book, and all of the stories. All those constellation stories._

_"Just... come back to us, Bellamy. And be safe."_

* * *

_"Dude, so, I met this doctor. Eric Jackson. And I talked mad shit about never finding love, but... well, you know. Eric's the one. Ugh, that sounds so cliche. How's space? I also saw a picture of Abby Griffin's daughter. So, I'm not into girls, but damn. Anyways. I hope you're at least enjoying it a little bit up there. And Bellamy? I miss you._

* * *

Years and years of messages play, and with each one, Bellamy hurtles farther away from everything he's ever known.

* * *

_"Hey, Bellamy. Your mom died last week. We buried her out back, where we... where we would've buried you. If you ever came back."_

Miller's hair is greying, and he looks infinitely old, and infinitely sad.

_"Octavia was there at the funeral. I don't see her much anymore."_

He sighs, leaning back in his chair. _"You’re not listening to this. I know that. All these messages are just out there, drifting in the darkness... I figured as long as they were willing to send them there was some hope, but..."_

A tear rolls down his cheek. Bellamy shakes his head, grabbing the edges of the monitor and staring at his best friend's face. _"You're gone. And you're never coming back. I hoped as long as I could, man. I hope you know that, wherever you are. But I have to let go of you now. And I hope that you're at peace._

 _"I love you, Bellamy. You are... you_ were... _my best friend."_

* * *

The monitor goes dark, and Bellamy's heart rate shoots up with the terror that the messages are over.

And then there's her.

A beautiful, vaguely familiar woman appears on the screen, her dark hair tied up, her blue-green eyes striking. She looks like him, and she looks like his mother. She looks like Octavia, because she is.

His Octavia.

 _"Hey, Bell,"_ she says blankly, smirking humorlessly at the screen. _"You son of a bitch."_

He's paralyzed.

 _"I never made one of these when you were still responding 'cause I was so mad at you for leaving. When you went quiet, it seemed like I should just live with my decision. And I have."_ She looks around then, laughing softly. _"But today’s my birthday. And it’s a special one because you once told me..."_

She stops, unable to go on for a second. _"You once told me that we might both be twice the age I was when you left. And today's my thirtieth birthday."_

Octavia is crying freely now, and Bellamy feels like his heart is shattering into a million pieces, again and again and again.

 _"It would be a really good time for you to come back, Bellamy,"_ she says, wiping her tears. _"It's all I want."_

* * *

**the earth**

_interlude_

* * *

Octavia leans away from the screen, wiping her tears. For a moment, she feels fifteen again, utterly shattered.

"I didn't mean to intrude," a voice says softly.

She turns to see Abby in the doorway, her elbow resting demurely on one of the arms of her wheelchair.

"It's just that I've never seen you in here before," the professor continues, and Octavia stands with a grim sort of smile.

"That's because I've never been here before," she says, going over to the wheelchair.

"I talk to Clarke all the time," Abby says as Octavia rolls her out onto the corridor. "It helps. I'm glad you've started."

"I haven't," she says. "I just had something I needed to get out."

She wheels Abby into her office, leaving at her desk before she goes to ponder the chalkboard littered with numbers. Octavia knows she's an impeccable mathematician; and that's what makes it so much more frustrating to see the gravity equation on the board, a stark reminder of what she had to lose.

"They're still out there," Abby says gently.

"I know," Octavia lies. She hates lying to Abby, but she does it anyway.

"There are so many reasons their communications might not be getting through."

Octavia smiles gently. "I know, professor."

"I don't know what I'm more afraid of," Abby says. "Them never coming back, or them returning to see that I've failed."

"Then _let's_ succeed," Octavia says imperatively. It can't be about her and brother anymore; it's the fate of humanity.

Abby gestures at the formula. "So, back from the fourth iteration, let’s run it with a finite set."

She feels a prickle of unease skitter down her back. "With all due respect, Professor, we've tried that hundreds of times."

"It only has to work once, Octavia."

* * *

The two of them peer over the balcony, at the workers below. They continue to work on the station housed in the launch facility, year after year.

"Every rivet they drive in could have been a bullet," Abby says sagely. "We've done good for the world. Despite the fact that I might not figure this out before I die."

Octavia sips her drink. "Don't be morbid, professor."

"I'm not afraid of death, Octavia. I'm an old physicist; I'm afraid of time."

* * *

"You're afraid of time," Octavia murmurs, staring at the formula again. "For years we've tried to solve this equation without changing the underlying assumptions about time..."

"And?" Abby asks. Her tone is oddly and unfamiliarly sharp.

"And that means each iteration becomes an attempt to prove it's own proof. It's recursive. It's nonsensical," Octavia murmurs, tracing a number with her finger, leaving fine specks of chalk on her fingertips. 

"Are you calling my life's work nonsense, Octavia?" The question is asked in a mildly humorous tone, but Octavia can tell that neither of them find this even remotely funny.

"You've been trying to solve this equation with both arms tied behind your back, professor," she says, gazing warily at Abby. "I just don't understand why."

The professor sighs, before she begins to wheel herself out of the office. "I'm an old woman, Octavia. Could we pick this up another time? I'd like to talk to my daughter."

For the first time in fifteen years, Octavia realizes that Abby's lying.

* * *

**the ice**

* * *

"So, TARS kept the Ark right where we needed her, but it took years longer than we anticipated," Bellamy says imperatively. "We don't have the fuel or the time to visit the other two planets. So now we've gotta choose?"

"How?" Harper asks. She's much quieter these days, a detail that greatly disorients Bellamy. "They're both promising prospects. Lexa's data was better, but Dr. White is the only one still transmitting."

"We've got no reason to assume that Lexa's data may have suddenly gone bad," Clarke interjects, earning a sharp glare from Bellamy. "Her world has the key elements to sustain human life."

"As does Dr. White's," Bellamy says.

"Blake, this is my field," she hisses. "And I really believe Lexa's planet is the better prospect."

"Why?" he challenges. His blood is boiling beneath his skin, and he wants to lash out, to explode.

"Sanctum, that's why," Clarke says, getting to her feet and going to the whiteboard. "Think of Roan's world. Hydrocarbons, organics, but absolutely no life. And we'll find the same thing on Dr. White's."

"Because of the black hole?" Murphy asks. He's the only one who looks the same after their trip to Azgeda's planet.

Clarke nods. "Murphy's Law."

Murphy smirks a little. 

"Whatever can happen will happen," she continues. Accident is the first building block of evolution; but when you’re orbiting a black hole not enough can happen. It sucks in asteroids and comets, random events that would otherwise reach you. We need to go further afield."

"You once called Dr. White the best of us," Bellamy pushes. 

"She's remarkable," Clarke mutters. "We're only here because of her."

Bellamy's not entirely sure why he's so against the idea of Clarke going to Lexa's planet; he tries to tell himself it's because of the excess mission time, the fuel it would take, but he knows that it's more than that.

"And she's there on the ground sending a message that we should go to that planet," he says finally, watching Clarke carefully.

"Should we vote?" Raven asks.

"If we're going to vote, there's something you all need to know," he declares, eyes still on the doctor. "Princess."

Her knuckles, gripping the hem of her shirt, turn white, but she says nothing.

"They have a right to know," he insists, his voice just mildly softer.

"That has absolutely nothing to do with it," she tells him. There's cold, untamed fury in her eyes; if not for the mission she may have seriously injured him right there.

"What the hell are you guys talking about?" Raven asks.

"She's in love with Lexa Woods," Bellamy blurts, reveling in the moment for a second before hot guilt erupts in the pit of his stomach.

"Is it true?" Harper asks softly, glancing at Clarke.

Clarke takes a deep breath and nods. "Yes. And that makes me want to follow my heart. But maybe we’ve spent too long trying to figure all this with theory..."

"You are a _scientist,_ Clarke," Bellamy chokes out.

"Yeah, I am," she says defiantly, turning her burning gaze on him. "So fucking listen to me when I tell you that love isn’t something we invented; it’s observable, powerful. Why shouldn’t it mean something?"

"It means social utility, child-rearing, bonding," says Bellamy.

"We love people who've died!" she spits. "Where's the social utility in that? Maybe it means more, something we can’t understand yet. Maybe it’s some evidence, some artifact of higher dimensions that we can’t consciously perceive. I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen for six years, who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can’t yet understand it."

She glances at Harper, who can't meet her eye. Then at Bellamy.

"It's true," she says, looking both hateful and sad. "The very tiniest possibility of seeing Lexa again excites me. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong."

"Honestly, Clarke," he murmurs. "It might."

Glancing at everyone else, it becomes abundantly clear that she's lost the argument.

"TARS," Bellamy says heavily. "Set a course for Dr. White."

* * *

Bellamy finds her checking her population bomb later that day, her movements precise. 

"Clarke," he murmurs. "I'm sorry."

"Why?" she asks him without looking up. "You're just being objective. You know, unless you're punishing me for fucking up on Azgeda's planet."

"This wasn't a personal choice for me," he protests.

"Well, if you're wrong then you'll have a very personal decision to make," she says sharply. "Your fuel calculations are based on a return journey. Strike out on Dr. White’s planet, and we’ll have to decide whether to return home, or push on to Woods’ planet with Plan B. Starting a colony could save us from extinction." She closes the population bomb with a bitter smile. "You might have to decide between seeing your sister again... and the future of the human race. I trust you'll be just as objective then."

* * *

Octavia stands next to Ilian, watching the field burn. "We'll lose about a third this year," he says, pushing his long hair out of his eyes. "But I'll start working Anya's fields next year. Should make it up."

"What happened to Anya?" Octavia asks. Ilian just gives her a look that suggests that she doesn't ask about Anya again. 

"You having dinner with the Harmons?" he asks. The Harmons were the family that lived in Octavia's old house, and Niylah Harmon had actually been a distant friend of Bellamy's when they were kids. 

"Uh, yeah," Octavia says, putting her hands in her pockets. "Sure you don't need help burning the rest?"

Ilian smiles grimly. "I'll handle it."

* * *

Niylah's tone suggests easy conversation at dinner, but Octavia doesn't miss the way she keeps glancing at her wife, Gemina, who had also been a good friend of Bellamy's in the past. Meanwhile, their eight-year-old Aden interjects happily, occasionally coughing a little.

As their clearing the table and washing the dishes in the sink, Niylah nudges Octavia with her shoulder. "Will you stay the night? We left your room the way it was."

"I..."

Octavia swallows, turning her glance back to the yellow plate in her soapy hands. "I can't, Niylah. Too many memories."

A particularly violent bout of coughing from Aden brings them both out of their respective reveries, but he waves off their concerned expressions with a smile. "It's just the dust." And with that, he goes to join Gemina on the porch.

"I have a... a friend that can look at his lungs, Niylah," Octavia says softly. "Lincoln. He's the best doctor I know."

Niylah opens her mouth as if to say something, but then Gemina comes back inside, and she closes her mouth.

* * *

"She's been asking for you since you came to," Lincoln's voice says hazily through the fog of Abby's thoughts. Distantly, she hears Octavia yelling, cutting sharply across all the beeping of the machinery surrounding her hospital bed.

Clouds are rolling across a dark horizon. She thinks of Jake, and the more she thinks of him the harder it is to breathe.

And Clarke...

"Octavia," she manages to choke out when the mass of dark hair appears before her. Octavia reaches out and takes Abby's hand with infinite gentleness, so at odds with who she appears to be.

"I'm here, professor," the young woman assures her. "I'm here."

Guilt starts to bubble and rush through Abby's veins. How she's taken and taken from Octavia, and the poor girl had no idea.

"I don't have much time," Abby breathes. "But I have to tell you..."

"Just take it easy, Professor."

"All these years... all these people counting on me..."

How is she going to tell Octavia that she failed? That she lied?

"It's okay, Professor," she tells Abby. 

"I let you down... all of you..."

 _"No,"_ Octavia says firmly, and her voice is trembling. "I'm going to finish what you started."

"Octavia," Abby murmurs, glancing up into the woman's eyes. Pristine marbles of blue and green, glistening with unshed tears, just the way they had been when she was fifteen. She had the world in her eyes then, and she has them now. "I told you to have faith... to believe in me..."

"I do, professor, I do!" she implores. 

"I needed you to believe your brother was coming back..."

There's a pause before Octavia speaks again. "I do."

"I'm sorry, Octavia."

"There's nothing to be sorry for."

"I _lied,_ Octavia," Abby wheezes. _"I lied to you."_

Octavia's hand goes limp.

"There's no reason to come back," Abby admits, the horrible truth bubbling out of her mouth like poison. "There's no way to help us."

"But... but Plan A!" Octavia splutters. "All this, all these people, the equation..."

Abby feels the warmth of Octavia's hand disappear, and her fingers contract weakly. When she speaks again, her voice is the coldest Abby's ever heard it.

"Did he know?"

Abby cannot bring herself to respond, to speak, to breathe. She is going to die, and she is going to deserve it.

"Did my brother know?"

Nothing.

"Did—did he abandon me?"

In the corner of her eye, she sees Clarke. Her daughter's pale, golden hair is spilling down her back. 

Clarke turns to look at her. Her porcelain skin is ashen, her blue eyes hard and dull.

Abby closes her eyes.

* * *

The first sound that Octavia hears after the flatline is screaming. Her own screaming, she comes to realize. Screams that she has shaped into words.

_"No! NO! You can't go! You have to stay, you can't leave now—"_

She screams and screams until Lincoln gently pulls her away from the bed, and even then she doesn't stop.

* * *

The Dropship spirals towards the surface, narrowly escaping clouds of solid ice. Clarke supposes that it's a beautiful place, desolate as it seems. Murphy, Monty, and Harper talk quietly, going over the small amounts of data Dr. White sent. In front of Clarke, ice and snow drift across the iron sky. Spotting an assortment of silver buildings, Bellamy and Raven land the Dropship, and she secures her helmet.

Traces of the cold seem to seep through the material of the spacesuit, but it could also be the emptiness that has burrowed into her brain.

_Lexa may as well be dead after all these years. Bellamy's really only doing you a favor._

Her heart twists a little.

But when Bellamy glances at her in a silent plea for help with getting the ice away from the entrance to Dr. White's snowy lab, she doesn't object.

They manage to make their way inside, powering up and getting oxygen flowing through the place. Clarke pulls her helmet off and is startled by how cold it is inside the lab, despite the heating being turned on a few minutes ago. Her breath makes tiny clouds in front of her face, and she catches Bellamy staring at her, his own puffs of air temporarily obscuring his freckles.

She glances away from him and moves towards the cryo-chamber in the middle of the room, and reaches out to brush ice off of a bronze plate.

**DR. E. WHITE**

Clarke finds that she can't bring herself to push the button that will wake the woman who sleeps inside of it, her hand trembling so badly that Bellamy has to nudge it away and do it himself. There's a whooshing sound, a click, and then the metal doors begin to slide open.

Glancing once at Clarke, Bellamy unzips the plastic shroud holding the figure inside it.

The woman who rises from the chamber is sharply beautiful in a way Clarke could never even dream of being. Her cheekbones are high and sharp, and her long, luscious eyelashes frame glittering, hazel eyes. Her chapped lips part to take a desperate, shuddering breath, making her prominent jawline clench. Bellamy gazes at her with something akin to awe, and a flicker of irritation punches through Clarke's haze. 

The woman—Dr. White—pulls Bellamy close, cheek to cheek, her whole body shaking with violent sobs. Her chestnut hair is damp from the melted ice within the cryo-chamber plastered to the plain white shirt she wears.

"You came," she murmurs against Bellamy's cheek. "You—"

She erupts into more sobs.

"It's okay," Bellamy tells her, holding her more tightly. "It's okay."

* * *

"Operation Save Hot Mission Commander from The Ice has been completed," Raven says under her breath to Clarke. The latter shrugs a little, refusing to take the bait.

"If it makes you feel better," Raven pushes. "I bet Lexa was hotter."

"That definitely does not make me feel better," Clarke says with a small, watery laugh. "But I appreciate the sentiment." She turns away and hands a steaming mug to Dr. White, who just grips it tightly.

"Pray you never learn how good it can be to see another voice," the commander says, and now that she isn't crying, Raven notices that her voice is deep and rich. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Clarke glaring at a corner of the lab.

"I didn't have much to begin with," Dr. White continues. "And after a few years I lost it all. The last time I went to sleep I didn't set a waking date."

She now glances at Bellamy, who is determinedly attempting to make his unruly curls look neater. He's lucky that he makes the gesture look natural. "You have literally raised me from the dead," she murmurs.

Bellamy smiles softly. "Lazarus."

She nods. "And the others?"

"Dead," Clarke says sharply and tersely. Heads turn to her, and Raven jumps in to save the situation.

"I'm afraid you're it, commander."

"Please," Dr. White says. "Call me Echo. And only so far, surely?"

"With our situation, there's not much hope of any other rescue," Monty says gently.

This seems to be a substantial blow for Echo—she looks down into her tea as if it'll provide some answer as to why this happened.

"Echo," Clarke says. "Tell us about your world."

She glances up, smiling softly. "Our world, I hope. Our world is cold, stark... but undeniably beautiful. The days are 67 cold hours—the nights are 67 far colder hours. The, uh, gravity's very pleasant here, only about 80% of Earth's. Up here, where I landed, the 'water' is alkali and the air has too much ammonia in it to breathe for more than a few minutes. But down at the surface—and there is a surface—the chlorine dissipates and the ammonia gives away to crystalline hydrocarbons and breathable air. To organics; to life, maybe.

"Yeah," Echo finishes, glancing at the others. "We could be sharing this world."

"Those readings are from the surface?" Raven whispers.

"Yeah, I've dropped various probes over the years," Echo confirms. 

"How far have you explored?" Murphy asks, speaking for the first time since they woke her up.

"Uh, I've mounted several expeditions, but with my limited store of oxygen, KIPP was the one who did most of the work."

With this, she nods a battered machine closely resembling TARS.

"What's wrong with him?" TARS asks, apparently taking in the mess of wires and metal parts.

"Degeneration," Echo says, watching them over the rim of the mug. "He misidentified the first organics we found as ammonia crystals. We struggled on for some time, but I ultimately decommissioned him and used his power source to keep the mission going." She lowers her head slightly. "And I thought I was alone _before_ I shut him off."

"Would you like me to look at him?" TARS inquires.

"No," Echo says softly. "No, I think he needs a _human_ touch."

"Dr. Griffin, CASE is relaying a message for you from the comm station," TARS says, turning to Clarke. She nods once before glancing at Raven. _This can't be good,_ Raven thinks, but she doesn't stop Clarke from walking away.

* * *

_"Dr. Griffin, I'm sorry to tell you that your mother died today."_

The woman on the screen looks vaguely familiar, closely resembling Bellamy. With a dull shock, Clarke realizes that it's Octavia, all grown up.

Strangely, Octavia seems to be shaking with barely controlled anger. _"She had no pain and was—she was at peace. I am sorry for your loss."_

She feels someone standing behind her, a hand on her shoulder, fingers curling into her hair. Clarke doesn't even have to turn to know who it is.

"Is—is that Octavia?" she asks quietly. Her eyes are stinging and she can barely breathe. "She's grown so much—"

 _"Griffin, did you know?"_ Octavia asks suddenly, her tone absolutely acidic. _"Did she tell you?"_

Both Bellamy and Clarke glance up and into the face of the enraged woman before them. _"Did you know that Plan A was a lie? That you were never coming back? You left us here. To starve. To suffocate. To set up your colony and forget us. You were never supposed to come back. Did she tell you that?"_

Octavia takes a deep, shuddering breath, and when she speaks again her voice is small. _"Bell? Did—did you leave me here to die?"_

The screen goes dark, and she hears Bellamy exhale. Clarke's heart is pounding dully in her ears.

_Mom—_

"My mother devoted her whole life to Plan A," Clarke says, shaking. "I have no idea what she means—"

"I do," a honeyed voice says, and they turn to see Echo standing in the doorway, tugging idly on one of the strings of her sweatshirt.

"She never even hoped to get people off of Earth," Bellamy whispers.

"No," she agrees. 

"But she's been trying to solve that stupid fucking equation for over forty years!" Clarke exclaims. The dull aching she experienced in the wake of her mother's death has gone, replaced by electric anger. 

"Clarke, your mother solved the equation before I even left," Echo says gently.

"Then—then why wouldn't she use it?" Clarke asks.

"The equation couldn't reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics," Echo sighs. "You need more—"

"More what?" Bellamy asks sharply.

"More data. You need to see the inside of a black hole. And the laws of nature prohibit a naked singularity. If a black hole is an oyster, then the singularity is the pearl on the inside. The gravity is so strong that it's always hidden in darkness, beyond the horizon. That's _why_ we call it a black hole."

"If we could look beyond the horizon—" Clarke starts desperately.

"Some things aren't meant to be known," she says softly. "Your mother had to find another way to save humanity from extinction. So she chose Plan B. A colony."

"But why would she _lie?"_ Clarke asks, her voice cracking. "Why would she keep building that damn station?"

"Abby understood the issue with getting people to try and accept that there was no hope for them. She would, of course, cause a war of some kind. In the end, Clarke, all people care about is saving themselves." Echo then glances at Bellamy. "Or their family."

"That's bullshit," Clarke spits. 

"Would you have left if you hadn’t believed you were trying to save them?" Echo asks. "Evolution has yet to transcend that simple barrier—we can care deeply, selflessly for people we know, but our empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight."

"The lie..." Clarke repeats weakly."

"Was unforgivable," Echo finishes. "And she knew it. Your mother was prepared to shatter her own sense of humanity to save our species. The ultimate sacrifice."

Echo speaks of Clarke's mother as if she was a saint for what she did, but Clarke herself can only feel herself getting more and more nauseated as the conversation goes on.

"The ultimate sacrifice was made by the people Professor Griffin abandoned on Earth," Bellamy murmurs quietly, his tone cold. "The people who will die because, in her fucking arrogance, she declared their case hopeless."

"Bellamy, their case _is_ hopeless," Echo implores. "We are the future."

Numbly, Clarke reaches out to put her hand on Bellamy's shoulder. "What can I do?" she whispers.

Bellamy turns to her, infinite sorrow in his eyes. He reaches out to brush hair out of her eyes, an alarmingly loving gesture that seems to steady them both. "Let me go home."

* * *

"You're sure?" Lincoln asks. They're currently on the long drive from NASA's headquarters to Niylah's house.

"Her solution was correct. She'd had it for years," Octavia says, her knuckles even whiter than normal on the wheel.

"So you're telling me it's worthless."

"It's only half the answer," she sighs.

"And the other half?" Lincoln asks.

Octavia points at the sky with her left hand. "Out there? A black hole. But down here on Earth, I'm not sure you can."

* * *

Bellamy stares at the large glass window, watching snowflakes drift across his vision. He's changed out of his spacesuit and into more comfortable clothing, but he still feels uneasy. He hasn't seen Clarke in hours.

He hears the click of a door opening, and another as it is closed. A moment later, Echo joins him at the window.

"It was different when I left Earth," she says softly. "Less dust. More people."

When he doesn't reply, he feels a hand on his shoulder. "You left someone behind, too, didn't you?"

Bellamy nods. "My sister."

They stay in their own respective silences until Echo speaks again. "Clarke," she says. "She had a lot of faith in her mother."

"That's what it seemed like to me," Bellamy says softly. "But I never really knew anything about their relationship, except that it wasn't as pleasant as it looked like."

"Did she tell you that or did you figure it out on your own?"

Bellamy scoffs lightly. "Clarke doesn't talk to me about her feelings. I figured it out."

This prompts a light laugh from Echo. "You must be very smart, then."

He shakes his head. "I wasn't smart enough to stay with my family."

She grabs his shoulder and pushes it gently so that he's facing her. "Bellamy, what you're doing is extraordinary," Echo tells him. "I know that there were sacrifices to be made, but you are still doing what millions, billions couldn't do. It's brave. _You're_ brave."

There's a heaviness in her eyes as she says it, and Bellamy starts to lose all train of thought. "So are you," he breathes. 

They're close, much too close—but because they are both infinitely lonely people who seek an escape from the brutality of reality, they crash their lips into each other, holding each other in a searing kiss. Echo's nearly as tall as he is, so their bodies don't fit together quite right—this, however, does not bother Bellamy. He pushes her lips apart with his own and explores her mouth, his hands tightly gripping her hips. Echo's legs automatically come up to wrap around his waist, and the first buck of her hips against his banishes all coherence and logic from his brain.

"Bellamy," Echo gasps against his skin. "Bellamy, think." Her words don't match her actions, however, as she slowly unzips his jacket.

"I don't want to," he whispers, pushing her against a wall. "Do you?"

Echo opens her mouth to speak, but when Bellamy kisses her again her words turn into a moan.

It feels good, he supposes, but the deepest corners of his mind have woken up.

_Should I do this?_

He's desperate to forget, desperate for release. He left everything behind for a lie, and despite Echo's words everything he's done was worthless.

It's skin against skin now, and Echo tugs his hair hard enough for it to sting a little. But it's good. She isn't particularly quiet as he moves against her, but it's loud enough to drown all the thoughts that have reappeared. 

_Stop,_ a voice in his head says. _You have to stop._

She gasps and yells into his shoulder as her body clenches around him, and Bellamy follows her into the void, past the point of no return.

* * *

They're mostly silent as they put their clothes back on, speaking only to inquire about the whereabouts of their pants, shirts, anything that was hastily discarded in their temporary lack of sense.

Guilt and shame is burning in the pit of his stomach, blank hatred at himself. He hates that he lost control so easily, lost sight of what's important. Every little sound in that room pulls him back into real life, every sound appearing louder and louder. By the time Echo pulls up the zipper of her jeans, his head is pounding.

"You alright?" she asks.

"Fine," he says tersely. In that precise moment he wants nothing more than to be as far away from her as possible.

* * *

"What about auxiliary oxygen scrubbers?" CASE asks.

"They can stay," Bellamy says. "I'll be asleep for most of the journey." Bellamy then glances at Clarke, whose eyes are bloodshot.

"I have a suggestion for your return journey," Monty says, staring at his helmet. Harper stands behind him, arms crossed. "Have one last crack at the black hole. Sanctum is what we call a gentle singularity—well, they're hardly gentle, but the gravitational pull of Sanctum is gentle enough to let you fly into it, with the right velocity. Bellamy, _you_ might be able to figure out what lies beyond the horizon. TARS is coming with you, right? I've already told him what to look for."

"I need to take the optical transmitter from KIPP," TARS says.

"You would do this for us?" Bellamy asks softly, glancing at the robot.

"Before you get teary you've gotta remember that I'm a robot and I have to do everything you say anyway."

"Your cue light's broken," Bellamy mumbles.

"I'm not joking!"

The light turns on.

* * *

Clarke glares at the ground, her fingers clenched into fists. 

"The Dropship's almost ready," Echo says, approaching her. 

Clarke nods, unable to speak.

"Uh, Monty and I need TARS to remove and adapt some components from KIPP," Harper says. Raven, Murphy, and Bellamy are standing in another room of the landing pod, and Clarke can distantly hear shouting.

Echo seems to look a little pale. "He can't disturb KIPP's archival functions."

"We know. That's why we'll supervise," Monty tells her.

Echo considers this for a moment before nodding slowly. With that, they leave, and it's just Clarke and Echo again.

"Come on," Echo murmurs, touching her shoulder. "I want to show you the probe sites."

The last Clarke wants is to be around anyone right now, but she figures that she can't refuse. She takes Echo's outstretched hand before putting on her helmet, and together they venture through the airlock and into the icy air.

* * *

Murphy's angry.

He can't recall the last time he felt this feeling, this rage that pulled at his brain and crawled beneath his skin.

"You can't," he says. "Hey, are you fucking listening to me?" 

He grabs Bellamy's shoulders, but Bellamy shoves him away. "You were supposed to _understand!"_ Bellamy bellows, all the color draining from his face.

"Understand what?" Raven spits. "That you realize that this isn't the adventure you wanted and now you want to go home?"

 _"OCTAVIA WAS FIFTEEN!"_ he screams, and Murphy's heart sinks. That's what it was all about, all along. Bellamy's voice cracks and breaks. "I left her."

"So did we, man," Murphy tells him, trying to keep his voice soft and even.

"Yeah, but I was her brother," Bellamy chokes out. "I was the one who wasn't supposed to leave. The two of you have each other. All I had was her and all she had was me."

Raven's cheeks go red. "What about us?"

Bellamy looks up. "What?"

"You may not like to hear it, Blake, but we're your best friends," Murphy says, grabbing Bellamy's shoulder again. "We—we don't want to lose you. Because I love you. And Raven loves you. And Monty and Harper, too. And Clarke, too. You have a family here, too. It's not just a matter of going back to Octavia, but it's a matter of leaving us, too."

"Murphy, don't," Bellamy says quietly.

"Don't _what?"_

Bellamy looks up, his eyes full of tears. It startles him, shakes Murphy to the core of his being to see him crying. "Don't make me choose between my family and my friends."

"I thought—" Murphy starts, then swallows. "I thought we were your family, too."

"Murphy, I—"

"No."

Both he and Bellamy turn to look at Raven, whose voice has gone gravelly and shaky under strain. "You should go, Bellamy," she says, glancing at the floor. "You should go home."

Murphy's frozen in his spot as he watches Bellamy pull her into a rough embrace—he moves only when Bellamy pulls him into the hug as well.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. Murphy feels anger, hate, and he feels love. He always knew to some degree how much he loved Bellamy, but he has never loved him more than he does now. Murphy feels loving, and he feels loved, broken and raw as this decision is starting to make him feel.

"Don't forget us, Bellamy," he murmurs. Black curls brushing against his forehead, arms encompassing him from all directions.

"I won't," he whispers.

Someone sniffles. Maybe Raven. "Promise," she whispers.

"I promise," Bellamy says, his chin against the side of Murphy's head. "I promise."

* * *

"Gemina will be home soon," Niylah says urgently, grabbing Octavia's arm. Octavia glances over her shoulder to see Lincoln kneeling in front Aden, checking his heartbeat.

"We'll make this quick, Nye, I promise," Octavia murmurs, gently pulling out of her grip. 

"If something _is_ wrong," Niylah murmurs. "What do you think is going to happen?"

Octavia bites her lip, swallows. Lincoln turns his head to look at her before shaking his head almost imperceptibly. 

"Aden's done," she says to Niylah. "Go make sure Lincoln can check you."

With that, she slips upstairs, heading straight for her room.

* * *

"Bellamy told me why he feels like he has to go back," Echo says conversationally, walking next to Clarke as they journey across a massive sheet of ice.

"If this is about getting me to change his mind, then let's go back right now," Clarke says sharply. Her heart aches at the thought of confronting him, especially in light of his choice to return to Earth.

"No, I understand his position," Echo says in what she must believe is a reassuring tone, but Clarke is anything but assured of anything at the moment. "See, I didn't have any attachments when I left. But I see that isn't the case with either you or Bellamy. But despite that, I can promise that I understand that yearning, that _need_ to be with other people. It's monumentally, massively powerful. It's what makes us human. Not to be taken lightly..."

Clarke's skin prickles and she represses a shudder—whether because of the cold or something else, she can't tell.

"You know why we couldn't just send machines on this mission, Clarke?" Echo asks after they make a couple of turns. "It's because trips like this are impossible without improvisation. Machines don't improvise because they're not afraid to die. This instinct to survive may as well be the single greatest ability of humanity as a whole. The only reason we've made it this far is because in the end, we only care about ourselves; sometimes our survival insinct may extend to family. You and your mother—"

"That's why Bellamy's going home, whether it's hopeless or not," Clarke retorts, suddenly keen to defend any attack against him, whether it's subtle or not.

"And what does research say is the last thing you see before you die?" Echo continues as if she hadn't heard Clarke's outburst. "Your family. Your friends. At the very moment of death, your mind pushes a little harder to survive. For them." 

Echo steers them over to the edge of an icy cliff before speaking again. "When I left Earth I felt fully prepared to die. But I just never faced the possibility that my planet wouldn’t be the one. None of this turned out the way it was supposed to."

"My mother would disagree," Clarke mutters.

"Your mother doesn't know the truth," Echo says tonelessly, going still. Clarke pauses too, waiting, her heart starting to beat faster and faster—

Echo whirls around and rips the long-range transmitter from Clarke's neck before kicking it away.

"What the hell are you doing—?" Clarke starts, but Echo grabs her shoulders with a surprising amount of force, effectively shutting her up. "I'm sorry," she says, her face devoid of emotion. "I'm sorry."

She tightens her grip for a second, and shoves Clarke over the edge.

* * *

**the desertion**

* * *

In that dusty old bedroom, Octavia begins to feel something, a buzzing in her bones, something big and immensely powerful, swallowing her whole. Her head is pounding as she stares at the one spot on her bookshelf without a book, remembering how she never put back the one that fell the day her brother left, the one she'd left on her desk forever without even considering it. She slowly walks towards the shelf, just reaching out for the dusty surface before she hears footsteps running up the stairs.

Octavia turns to see Aden standing in the doorway.

"Lincoln wants you to come downstairs," he says.

* * *

"They can't stay here," Lincoln murmurs, his hands on her shoulders. "It's too—"

"What the hell is this?" a new voice says, and everyone turns to see Gemina standing in the doorway, her arms crossed.

"Your wife and son can't stay here," Lincoln tells her. "Their lungs are at risk of total failure if they stay even one more day—"

Gemina reaches up to hit Lincoln in the face. With a hot flush of rage, Octavia stumbles back. She knows it didn't hurt him, but Lincoln's expression is one of shock and muted anger.

"You're done here," Gemina snarls, rounding on Octavia, who doesn't back away this time. "You're leaving."

"Bellamy didn't know you to be this stupid, Gem," Octavia says angrily.

"Bellamy didn't even get to really know me or anyone else at all because he _left!"_ Gemina counters. "We aren't leaving this house, Octavia."

"You have to—"

"I can't! This is the small corner of the world that belongs to us, that we have to take care of, and I'm not giving up on it!"

"Well, it gave up on you," Octavia hisses. Distantly, she hears Niylah telling Aden to go back upstairs. She sighs, trying to soften her voice. "You could come with us."

"And what? Live underground with you, praying that your brother comes back to save us all?" Gemina asks in disbelief.

"Bellamy's not coming back," Octavia says quietly, her hands curling into fists. "He was _never_ going to come back. It's up to us now. It's up to me."

"To what?" scoffs Gemina. "Save the human race? Bellamy couldn't—"

 _"BELLAMY DIDN'T EVEN TRY!"_ Octavia screams, grabbing Gemina by the shoulders. "He _abandoned us._ Abandoned me..."

Noting the lack of change in Gemina's steely expression, Octavia releases her. "At least let Niylah and Aden come—"

"No," Niylah says suddenly, looking whiter than a sheet. "No. We aren't going."

Lincoln frowns, and Octavia feels like a blow to her gut. "So what?" she asks softly. "You gonna wait for Aden to die?"

Gemina opens her mouth, then closes it. 

"Get out," Niylah says, now infuriated by Octavia's comment. "Get the hell out."

Grabbing Lincoln's arm, Octavia does exactly that.

* * *

Clarke lands on a slightly lower ledge with such force that her very bones seem to vibrate. Echo leaps down after her, infuriatingly graceful. "I can't let you leave," she says.

"Why?" chokes out Clarke.

"We'll need your ship to continue the mission—once the others realize what this place isn't."

Clarke's blood turns to ice. "You faked all the data." Not a question.

Echo glances away from her for a moment. "I had a lot of time."

"Is there even a surface?"

"No."

Clarke tries to get to her feet, but Echo kicks her over the edge again. This time, however, Clarke is able to hold on, just by her gloved fingertips.

"I tried to do my duty, Clarke," Echo murmurs, sounding emotional again, her voice uneven. "But I knew from the day that I arrived that there was nothing here for me. I swear I resisted it for years, but I knew..."

She approaches the ledge, and Clarke gasps a little. _I'm going to die._

"I knew there was a way to be rescued. I knew you would come if I made you think that there was a reason to."

"You fucking coward," Clarke spits.

In a fit of rage, Echo dives over the edge, pulling Clarke with her. They land on another ledge, and they start to wrestle each other. "Stop—!" Clarke tries to yell, but Echo's arm settles heavily on her throat, making her incapable of speech. For a moment they just stare at each other, trying to understand, the small, humane bits of their brain trying to establish a connection, anything—

Echo tilts her head up then smashes her faceplate against Clarke's, repeatedly and violently. Cracks begin to explode into her vision.

 _"Suit breach detected,"_ she hears a pleasant voice from inside the helmet say.

"You'll—you'll kill us both!" Clarke says, her voice suspended between a scream and a wheeze. "Echo, it's fifty-fifty that you'll die first—"

Echo leans away for a second, still pinning Clarke down. Both of their helmets are adorned with tiny fractures, and oh, god, she's going to die—

"Those are the best odds I've had in years," Echo murmurs. She slams her helmet into Clarke's again, and the latter's faceplate shatters, sprinkling glass all over Clarke's face. Even though Echo gets off of her, all the breath is torn from Clarke's body as ammonia rushes in. She raises her hands to try and cover the hole, but even now her strength is fading, her body weakening. She struggles and she chokes, and it would be so easy to close her eyes and die—

"Please don't judge me, Clarke," Echo murmurs, still audible over the short-range transmitter even though Clarke's can't see her anymore. "You were never tested like I was. Few people have been."

Clarke begins to crawl in the direction of what she hopes is the wall of the higher ledge. If she can just get there and activate the jets on her elbows, push herself up and back to the long-range transmitter...

_Bellamy._

The name floats hazily in front of her mind's eye. _I need Bellamy._

"Are you feeling it?" Echo asks softly. "Are you seeing your mother now? Your friends? Your loved ones?"

_Bellamy._

_He has to know—_

"That instinct drove me, Clarke," Echo says. Her voice is marred by remorse. "I'll save us all. I'll save them for you."

She continues to speak, her voice distorting and crackling as she gets out of range. Through her tears, Clarke sees a small black object topple over the top ledge.

 _The transmitter._ Echo must have knocked it over in her haste to leave.

Clarke crawls towards it, which takes the greatest effort she's ever required in her entire life. She can feel herself dying as she reaches for it and flicks a switch.

"Bell—" she rasps. She can't breathe, can't see, can't feel. "Bellamy. _Bellamy."_

Clarke leans forward, closing her eyes and pressing her forehead to the cool, icy ground.

* * *

Bellamy whirls around, lunging for the radio. "Clarke? Clarke, is that you?"

 _"Help,"_ she says. There's a horrible, choking, rasping sound, a sound that instills a gargantuan sense of panic in him.

"CASE!" Bellamy yells. CASE is already firing up the engines of one of Echo's ships, and he turns to Raven and Murphy. "Go find Monty and Harper," he tells them. "I'll go get Clarke."

He hops into the pilot's seat. "CASE—"

"I have a location," he says.

 _"No air,"_ Clarke wheezes over the radio. _"Ammonia—"_

"Don't talk, Clarke, breathe as little as possible," Bellamy says

_"Bellamy—"_

"It's okay, Clarke," he says. "I'm coming, Clarke, I promise."

* * *

"You did everything you could, O," Lincoln says, putting a hand on top of hers, which grips the steering wheel tightly.

Octavia brings the car to a screeching halt, thankful that there's no one else on that dusty, rural road. 

"Lincoln," she says. "There's something I need to do."

"Is it the right thing?" he asks, glancing at her. She leans forward to kiss him then, trying to memorize the softness of his lips and the feel of his stubble against her chin. She's kissed him a thousand times, and his kiss has given her strength a thousand times, just as it does now.

"Yeah," she murmurs. "It is."

She turns back to the wheel, and she turns the car around.

* * *

"Monty—"

"What does that look like to you, Harper?" he asks sharply. His hands are shaking. "Tell me."

"It looks nothing like she said it was," Harper starts. "But I'm sure there's a mistake—"

"There's no mistake," TARS says suddenly. "There are measures put into place here. A series of circuit failures starting with KIPP should anyone try to access his data..."

Monty glances at Harper, and with twin expressions of fear and disbelief, they realize the truth.

* * *

She's so achingly small as Bellamy drags her body into the cockpit. Her skin is pale, and for one horrible second he thinks she's dead.

And that second of horror stretches on as he realizes that Clarke isn't breathing.

"No," he hears himself say, as he tears his helmet and gloves off. He takes her helmet off, moving all the stray hairs away from her face. He laces his fingers together and positions them over her chest before bringing his joined hands down, counting out loud to himself.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven..."

* * *

Octavia leaps out of the car and grabs a tank of gasoline from the back of the Rover, before disappearing into Gemina's corn crops. She waters the ground with the gasoline, soaks some of the corn in it for good measure. When she comes back out of the crops, Lincoln is waiting with a lighter in his hand.

"You're sure this will work?" he asks.

"I'm sure," she tells him, taking the lighter with slightly shaking hands.

"Whenever you're ready," he murmurs, touching her shoulder before backing away.

She takes several deep breaths. Ignites the lighter. Oddly, the memory of Bellamy handing her one of his watches appears in her mind, something she hadn't thought about in a very long time.

Octavia closes her eyes, and drops the lighter.

* * *

"Twenty-six, twenty-seven, come on, Clarke, thirty—"

He pinches her nostrils shut and tilts her chin up before sealing his mouth to hers, wishing that he could give all of his breath to her. He imagines admitting that he would've liked to have had his mouth against hers in another situation; he imagines that she would roll her eyes, maybe laugh, maybe offer one of those elusive, rare, but beautiful smiles. 

It's the thought of this smile that returns him to the task at hand, which he takes to with renewed fervor. He silently begs for forgiveness for all the hurtful things he's said to her, for all the hate he used to harbor for her as he positively pounds against her chest with his fists. Because after all, she couldn't possibly die, not after the months he had known her which had actually been years, not after subtly finding out her favorite color and all the other small things about her, not after she held him after great wave on Azgeda's planet, after she looked at him with such love and acceptance even after all he's done to her.

"I need you," he admits. "Clarke, I need you to live." He understands now he was so angry when she made no effort to save herself on the water planet, so bothered by the evident history between her and Lexa. He understands that something had fallen into the place the moment they met, the moment he saw who she was. Something from his heart had reached out to her, and he couldn't let go.

"I can't," he murmurs. He puts his mouth against hers again, breathing—

"Move," she breathes against his lips and he does so immediately, turning around to look for an oxygen mask. 

"It was Echo," Clarke whispers haltingly. 

"Echo did this?" he asks in disbelief, holding the oxygen mask out to her. It occurs to him now that he could've just started with that, but in his panic he wasn't thinking clearly.

She nods, and realization hits Bellamy with the force of a freight train. "Oh, god."

He reaches across Clarke for his radio, and starts yelling into it. "Monty! Harper! SHIT! DOES ANYONE COPY?!"

Bellamy looks desperately at Clarke. "What do you think Echo would do if someone found out that her data was a lie?"

"I don't know," Clarke says shakily, using Bellamy's shoulder to push herself up to a standing position. "And I hope we don't find out."

* * *

"What do you think happened out there?" Murphy asks.

Raven shrugs. "Could be some sort of medical issue."

"Wouldn't Dr. White be able to help Clarke, then?"

"Maybe they didn't have supplies," Raven murmurs, walking on.

"Why'd Clarke call it in, then?"

"I dunno. Maybe something's wrong with Echo—"

She pauses, a horrible thought occurring to her. She looks back at Murphy.

"What?" he asks. "Raven, what is it?"

She ignores him and switches her long-range transmitter on with the intention of checking on Clarke, but she's met by yelling from both Bellamy and Clarke.

_"—ANYONE COPY? MONTY AND HARPER, DO YOU COPY? GET OUT OF THE RESEARCH POD! DOES ANYONE COPY—"_

"Yeah, we copy, we copy!" Raven says hastily, glancing at Murphy again. "What's going on!"

She hears Clarke coughing before she speaks. _"The bastard lied! She lied and we need Monty and Harper right now—"_

"Raven," Murphy says. "Raven, look."

She turns around to see a thin stream of smoke drifting out of the building Monty and Harper are in.

"Something's wrong," she says unnecessarily. "Murphy, let's g—"

"GET BACK!" he yells suddenly. "RAVEN, GET AWAY FROM THE BUILDING!"

He lunges forward and grabs her arms, pulling her back and away despite her protests. He slips on the ice and they both topple backwards, Raven's fall cushioned by his body. Before she can get up, however, she watches the building in front of her explode into towering flumes of fire.

* * *

"She's gonna go for the Dropship," Bellamy says, before swearing loudly. He glances at Clarke. "You strap in, and keep the mask on. CASE and I will pilot—"

"CASE won't let us go as fast as we need to," she snarls, ripping off the mask. "I can copilot."

Keen to save time, Bellamy nods. "Okay, come on."

They shoot through the icy landscape, with Clarke being surprisingly deft on the controls.

"I should've listened to you—" he starts, but is interrupted by Clarke's gut wrenching scream. In front of them, the building housing KIPP is now nothing more than rubble and smoke. Bellamy spots two figures lying on the ice just a few feet away. 

"It's Raven and Murphy," he says, and he sends the ship into a near nosedive. Clarke lands it roughly, and they quickly put on their helmets before opening the door. Murphy and Raven scramble in, followed by the heavily charred, rectangular form of TARS, talking over one another, but Bellamy only catches one thing over and over.

"They're dead," Raven says. Her voice is trembling. "Monty and Harper are dead."

* * *

"I told you about my ghost," Octavia murmurs. In the distance, the form of her old house starts to get bigger.

"Yeah," says Lincoln, glancing sideways at her.

"My brother thought I called it a ghost because I was afraid of it," she tells him. "But I was never scared of it. I only called it a ghost because to me, it felt like a person. Those books it knocked over, always forming messages in Morse on my bookshelf—it had to be someone. Trying to tell me something."

Lincoln sighs. "Octavia, there's no viable answer here on Earth. You'd have to look into a black hole to be able to understand how to get a large-scale space station of the ground—"

"Yeah, I _know,"_ she interrupts. "But if there's even the smallest chance that there's a solution down here, it's back there, back home. I know it sounds crazy, but it couldn't possibly be anything else."

Lincoln just angles his head towards the rearview window, watching the fields burn behind him for a moment. "I trust you," he says after a long moment. "But you better find that answer quickly, O. We're running out of time."

* * *

"CASE, where's the Dropship right now?" Bellamy asks. 

"Pushing into orbit," he says.

"If he takes control of the Ark we're dead," Murphy says, directing his mildly panicked gaze towards Bellamy.

"He'd maroon us?" Raven asks in disbelief.

"He _is_ marooning us," says Clarke. She reaches for the dashboard and the transmitter. "Dr. White? Dr. White, please respond."

After a moment of no response, she glances back at Bellamy, her eyes wide. "She doesn't know the docking procedure for the Ark. Her crew had never been required to know it." 

"That's good, isn't it?" Murphy asks. "She won't be able to lock with the Ark—"

"The autopilot does," Bellamy mutters.

"Yeah, but Dr. White doesn't have the renewed clearance to authorize the docking procedure," Raven reasons. "And the autopilot won't let her do it manually."

"That's true, but she'll be able to do it nevertheless," CASE adds. "TARS disabled the autopilot."

"Oh, that's _spectacular!"_ Bellamy roars, whirling around to face the machine. "What's your trust setting, TARS?"

"Lower than yours, apparently," TARS answers.

Bellamy growls in frustration before reaching for the transmitter. "Echo! Echo, if you attempt docking—"

There's a odd sound at the other end of the line, a decisive _click,_ and then static.

"She turned her transmitter off," Murphy says from behind him. "Line's busted."

"So what now?" Raven yells.

"C—DROPSHIP COMMS!" Murphy shouts after a minute, startling them all. "If we can access the comms for the Dropship then we can talk to her!"

"God bless you, John," Bellamy sighs, while Clarke starts punching buttons. She stops after a minute however, glancing up.

"What is it?" he asks her.

"TARS, is she locked on?" Clarke asks, ignoring him.

"Imperfectly."

"If she opens the airlock—" Raven starts.

"She'll die," Clarke finishes. "And she could cause extensive damage to the Ark."

Bellamy finishes her procedure and screams into the transmitter. "ECHO! DO _NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OPEN THE HATCH! DO NOT OPEN THE INNER HATCH!"_

"Here, Clarke," Raven says, switching spots with her. "CASE, pull us back!" she yells. CASE fires the retro-thrusters as Bellamy repeats his message.

_She has to answer. She has to answer._

"ECHO!" DON'T—"

 _"Bellamy, I don't know what Clarke's told you,"_ Echo says suddenly, her voice slightly garbled by interference, "but I'm taking control of the Ark. We'll talk about continuing the mission once we're all aboard—"

"There won't be any _goddamn_ mission if you open the hatch—" Bellamy pleads.

 _"It's not just about us, Bellamy,"_ she continues. _"It's about humanity, and—"_

They never do find out what else it's about, for just up ahead, the Dropship slams into the Ark, sending debris and fiery bits of metal spiraling away from the two ships. As he watches, there's a great explosion between the Dropship and the Ark, and the smaller ship starts to shred the closest module of the larger ship. And as the Ark begins to be torn apart, it starts to spiral towards the icy planet below.

"Shit, shit, shit, SHIT!" Bellamy screamed.

"She must've opened the fucking hatch," Raven mutters, now beside him. She glances at him, sees the idea in his eyes. "Oh, _no._ Bellamy. You know there's no point using our fuel to—"

"Analyze the Ark's spin!" Bellamy calls to TARS and CASE.

"And what the hell do you think you're doing?" Clarke and Murphy say in unison. Bellamy turns back to look at them, just for a second. 

"Docking."

* * *

"Gemina's going to kill us," Niylah murmurs, after Octavia finally convinced her to pack a few things and bring Aden to the NASA facility.

"The only thing that'll kill you is the idea of staying here," Lincoln says gently to her. "I swear, Niylah. This is the right thing to do, for you _and_ Aden."

"And what about Gemina?" she asks.

"I'll convince her to come along, too," Octavia promises, but she has a feeling that it's empty. "Lincoln, watch the fire. I just—I need something from my room."

"Make it quick," Lincoln urges her. 

"I know," she tells him, and despite not knowing what she'll walk away from this house with, she understands what she needs to do.

* * *

"Ark rotation is 67, 68 RPM!" TARS informs Bellamy.

"Get ready to match it on the retro-thrusters!" he commands. The insides of his gloves are soaked with sweat, but he doesn't let go of the controls. His mind swims with the images of a blindingly blue sky, supplies him with the memory of the sensation of shooting towards the ground.

"It won't be like the last crash," Raven murmurs beside him as if she can read his mind, her voice nearly inaudible over the roar of the engines.

"I know," he says. "I know."

"It isn't possible! It's too much of a risk!" CASE warns.

"No," Bellamy breathes. "It's necessary."

"Ark is hitting stratosphere," TARS says.

"It doesn't have a heat shield—" Clarke sputters.

Bellamy brings the ship perilously close to the red hot underside of the spinning Ark. The lander banks sideways, bringing its airlock within feet of the Ark.

"Ready, Raven?" he asks. He feels like his hands are shaking, but they remain steady on the joystick.

"Ready."

"If I black out, you take the stick," he orders. "TARS, get ready to engage the docking mechanism. Clarke and Murphy, uh—sit tight."

"Gotcha," Murphy says.

"Ark is heating," TARS cautions.

"HIT IT!" Bellamy screams, and Raven fires the retro-thrusters, which sends their small ship spinning before regaining balance. He hears Clarke swearing fluently as the G-force pulls them against their restraints, and he feels consciousness slipping away from him.

"B-Bell—" Raven stutters, yet unwavering in her ability to keep the ship steady.

"Come on, Reyes," he encourages. "We're almost there."

Ever so slowly, he moves the ship up, higher and higher. Debris clangs off the outside walls, but it won't pierce the metal, it won't be the end—

"Lock it," he hears Raven say.

A few clicks and beeps, and—

"Got it!" TARS informs them. 

"Let's pull up!" Bellamy huffs. Parts of the Ark are ripping off in the heat, but at least the main part of the ship is intact, and that's all he needs. "Kill the spin and fire the thrusters!"

Raven does so—after an excruciating moment of nothing, no spin, no movement, both ships begin to rise. They rise, fast enough to escape the planet's orbit. And at last, they're in the clear.

"Holy shit," Raven mumbles.

"We're heading into Sanctum's pull," Murphy says, taking off his restraints and floating through the cockpit. "Oh. Clarke passed out."

* * *

 _"We're slipping towards Sanctum. Should I use main engines?"_ CASE asks over the short-range transmitter. Bellamy floats through the damaged hallways of the Ark, seeking the pristine parts. 

"No," he murmurs. "Let the Ark slide for as long as we can."

His way is obstructed by TARS, cutting an oddly striking figure. Just the robot he wanted to see.

"I need something from you, TARS," Bellamy murmurs.

"Of course you do," he replies in an alarmingly sardonic tone. "What is it?"

Bellamy hesitates, just for a second. And then he begins to speak.

* * *

He finds Clarke checking the population bombs.

"Hey," Bellamy says.

"There's good news and bad news," she says in lieu of a greeting. Now looking through the glass of a new faceplate, Bellamy can't help but note that she still looks a little pale, a little bruised.

"What is it?"

She sighs through her nose. "The navigational mainframes wrecked and we don't have enough life support to make it back to Earth. We'll barely make it to Lexa's planet, maybe eliminate the risk with cryo. If it's still even working."

Bellamy understands that it should feel worse, the news that he has no means of ever returning home again, but his brain seems to just be numb. "What about fuel?"

"It isn't enough," Clarke murmurs. "But Raven's got a plan—let Sanctum suck us right into her horizon, then a powered slingshot around to launch us to the planet. The only problem is time..."

She trails off, gazing up at him.

"Neither of us can afford to worry about relativity right now," he says, floating forward and placing his hands on either side of her helmet. Her teardrop escapes her eye and floats in front of her face.

"I'm sorry, Bellamy," she tells him, grabbing his arms. And she pulls him close, touching her helmet to his, getting as close to him as the universe will let them be for now.

* * *

Octavia ignores the way Lincoln yells for her to hurry up as she brushes a finger along the surface of her bookshelf, leaving a thin line ending at the watch resting at her endpoint. She remembers how she had flung it away after Bellamy had given it to her.

But it had not stayed on the floor for long—even in her infuriated state she had known that this was the very last thing her brother had left her.

She feels odd, like she's not alone in her room. There's an old, ancient sort of presence hovering at her shoulder, old and familiar. It's her ghost, the ghost that knocked the books over and made the dust lines. And Octavia knows this with her whole heart, that there's someone there—they could just be hiding on the other side of the bookshelf.

* * *

"Once we've gathered enough speed around Sanctum, we use Lander 1 and Dropship 2 as rocket-boosters to push us out of the black-hole's gravity," Raven says over the radio. Her heart is still pounding, and she feels Murphy pause in his movements just long enough to touch her arm, steadying her. She glances out the window of her ship, to the other side of the Ark, where Bellamy, Clarke, and TARS are.

 _"The linkages between the landers are destroyed,"_ Bellamy says over the radio. _"So I'll control manually. When Lander 1's spent, TARS will detach—"_

 _"And get sucked into Sanctum's heart of darkness,"_ TARS finishes.

"Why does TARS have to detach?" Raven asks. She gets the vague feeling that she and Bellamy are running on different agendas at the moment, an unshakable, nerve-wrecking notion.

_You're just scared. It's gonna be fine._

_"We have to shed mass if we want to escape Sanctum's gravity,"_ Clarke explains. _"Newton’s third law—the only way humans have ever figured out of getting somewhere is to leave something behind."_

"Bellamy, you can't ask TARS to do this for you," Murphy reasons.

_"He's a goddamn robot, Murph. I can ask him to do anything."_

"You jackass, Bellamy—" Raven blurts.

 _"It's what we intended, Ms. Reyes,"_ TARS says nonchalantly. _"It’s our last chance to save people on Earth—if I can find some way to transmit the quantum data I’ll find in there, they might still make it."_

"If there's anyone left to receive it," Murphy mutters. Ahead of them, the golden horizon of Sanctum glows, an astonishingly beautiful sight for something so destructive. And in the middle, the gaping mouth of utter blackness, which the Ark starts to accelerate towards. The gravity makes the whole ship shudder, and Murphy reaches across the space between their seats to take her hand.

 _"Ready?"_ Bellamy asks.

 _"Ready,"_ TARS replies.

_"Main engine ignition in three, two, one, mark—"_

Raven reaches forward and fires the thrusters on several ships, one by one, pushing them farther away from Sanctum. They curve around it, and there's a great acceleration, pushing Raven back against her seat. 

_"That shit just cost us eighty-four years!"_ Bellamy screams over the radio, but he sounds strangely yet predictably excited. 

_"Ready to go, TARS?"_ Clarke asks, sounding more somber.

_"Yep."_

"Hey, TARS?" Murphy says.

_"What?"_

He chuckles softly. "I'll miss you."

_"So will I. See you on the other side, Bellamy and Clarke."_

There's silence, and Raven frowns. She's about to speak, but then comes the final word from TARS.

_"Detach."_

She watches Lander 1 plummet into the darkness—wondering, if perhaps, robots can feel fear.

 _"Dropship 2, prepare for detach,"_ Bellamy says softly.

"NO!" Murphy screams. "NO, NO, _NO—WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!"_

"Three," says CASE quietly from behind them.

 _"Newton's Third Law,"_ Clarke says softly. _"You have to leave something behind."_

"Clarke, you can't!" Raven screams. "You can't leave us, you can't— _YOU SAID THERE WAS ENOUGH LIFE SUPPORT FOR ALL OF US!"_

"Two," CASE says.

Raven's sobbing now, begging them not to go, to leave, not now, not after they've come this far—

 _"Bellamy and I agreed,"_ Clarke sighs. _"Ninety percent."_

Raven has no clue what that means, and she'll never find out.

 _"I love you guys,"_ Bellamy tells them. _"Always."_

"One," CASE finishes.

She hears Clarke's shaky breath on the other end. _"Detach."_

Murphy's eyes are closed, but Raven's stay open as she watches Bellamy and Clarke's ship fall into the darkness.

* * *

**sanctum**

* * *

At some point, Clarke passes out.

And then she wakes again, she isn't on the ship, and there's no sign of Bellamy or TARS. Instead, she stands in a familiar room, her feet on firm ground. Yet when she jumps a little to test the gravity, she doesn't come back down—she floats around her mother's study at NASA headquarters.

The equations strewn across the chalkboard are slightly blurred through her visor, but she doesn't think it's safe to take off her helmet. But she drifts towards it anyway, the numbers and the symbols that meant absolutely nothing in the end. The board is solid when Clarke reaches out to touch it, but the movement of her fingers dragging across the numbers doesn't smudge the chalk at all. She hears movement behind her and whirls around to face Octavia Blake, her hair pulled up into a messy bun. Though she doesn't resemble her brother too much, her eyes bear the same intensity as Bellamy's, a beautiful sharpness to her features. With a dull shock in her gut, Clarke recognizes her mother, sitting in a wheelchair and watching Octavia with a weary expression. Their mouths move, but Clarke hears none of it.

"Hey," she says, testing her voice at first, then louder, to get them to notice her. "Hey!"

All of a sudden, the room appears to fold in on itself, and her heart starts to beat so fast that her head spins and her vision darkens and—

* * *

Drifting through the lines, Bellamy loses all sense of time. Here, time is infinite. Here, time is nothing. 

But he's speeding up as he moves through his current tunnel, going too fast, too fast for him to break. He reaches desperately for the walls, anything to hold onto. He grabs at some odd, vertically placed bricks, accidentally knocking them over. Impulsively, he reaches for it—yet the 'brick' turns out not to be a book at all, but a _book,_ tightly packed pages. He skims the first few lines with his eyes, recognizing the text immediately. _Julius Caesar._

He glances up, at what is evidently a bookshelf. And through the crack, he sees _her._

Octavia, fourteen years old, glances up from where she sits at her desk, her pen hovering over her notebook. Gingerly she gets to her feet walking slowly to the bookshelf.

"Octavia," he murmurs. "Octavia. _Octavia._ Octavia!"

She doesn't hear him—she just bends to pick up the book and put it back in its place.

"No, no, no, no, _no!"_ he pleads, grabbing the shelf. "OCTAVIA!"

She closes the gap, and is lost to him. For a second Bellamy just floats, his breathing heavy and his head spinning.

_Stay._

_Stay._

_Stay._

_Stay._

_Stay._

_Stay._

_Stay._

_S—T—A—Y_

Over and over in Morse, he recites it in his head, methodically knocking over books. _STAY._

_Stay._

_Stay._

_Stay._

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her room again, and he soars towards it, watching Octavia, now fifteen, lie in bed, her shoulders shaking. Her desk is in front of the door, and astonishingly, he watches the door be pushed open and himself walk through it, looking younger yet exactly the same as he does now.

"You have to talk to me," Other Bellamy says roughly. "I have to fix this before I go."

A tear rolls down Octavia's cheek. "Then I'll keep it broken so that you have to stay."

It's a pointless conversation, and there's only one thought in his head—he can't let himself leave. He can't.

"Bellamy!" he yells. It feels odd to be yelling is own name, but he'll do anything, anything if it'll make him stay. 

_S—T—A—Y_

"I figured out the message," she says, and his heart soars, because Bellamy will have to listen, he'll have to believe—

* * *

Bellamy doesn't stay. He leaves. He leaves, he goes on a mission, and he ends up in a black hole, he ends up here, watching the whole thing happen all over again.

* * *

_"—ellamy. Bellamy. Bellamy, do you copy?"_

He jumps at the sound of TARS's voice, looking around wildly before realizing that it's coming from the radio at his hip.

"You survived," he murmurs.

 _"Yes,"_ TARS says. _"In their fifth dimension."_

"Someone better tell me who the hell 'they' are... and why they would help us."

_"I don’t know, but they constructed this three-dimensional space inside their five-dimensional reality to allow you to understand it."_

"Great, I understand it really well now," Bellamy mutters under his breath.

 _"Yes, it is,"_ TARS counters, sounding slightly irritated. _"You’ve seen that time is represented here as a physical dimension; you even worked out that you can exert a force across spacetime."_

He swallows. "Gravity. To send a message. Gravity crosses dimensions, including time."

And this, _this_ is the answer that everyone had hoped so desperately to find. 

"I have to tell her," he whispers.

_"Tell who?"_

"My sister," Bellamy says, loudly and clearly, the most obvious answer in the world. Octavia, with her mind, who would save the world. "TARS, you have the quantum data now—"

 _"I won't be able to transmit it to Earth,"_ TARS reports.

"Don't worry," Bellamy assures him, drifting over to another iteration of Octavia's bedroom. Knocking over books, until he sees the watch that he had given her.

_"To give such complicated data to a child..."_

"Not any child."

_"She wouldn't understand its significance for years, Bellamy."_

A sudden and violent spike of anger courses through him and he knocks more books off the shelf. "Then figure something out! Everyone on Earth is going to die!"

He wishes fervently that Clarke was with him—Clarke, who'd conjure up a solution in seconds. Clarke, who may not have even survived. He shakes his head. He won't even consider it now.

_"They didn't bring us here to change the past, Bellamy."_

He hears something in these words, something that inexplicably makes sense to him, and to him alone.

"No," he agrees. "No, we brought ourselves here."

_She'll need to know where to go—_

"TARS, give me the coordinates to NASA's headquarters in binary."

Soaring through rows and columns of copies of her bedroom, reaching into a dusty cloud hovering in one of the iterations, forming delicate lines of binary code.

"Don't you see, TARS?" he asks. "I brought myself here. This is the bridge between the past and the future, between knowing and not knowing. Time means nothing here, and yet it means nothing."

He watches a million Octavias, all a little older than the last. In the space of a few minutes, he watches her grow up. "I thought They chose me. But I was wrong. They chose her."

_"To do what?"_

He smiles at the room containing a five-year-old Octavia and fourteen-year-old Bellamy, the two of them sitting on her bed as Bellamy shows her pictures of constellations from his books. "To save the world."

He floats away, back to a room containing his watch. There are flat planes rising up from the hands of the watch, and Bellamy moves one gingerly with his hand. His head races.

_Morse._

"I'll be able to find Octavia and tell her everything she needs to know," Bellamy says confidently. "Just like I found this moment."

_"How?"_

"Love, TARS," he sighs. "Love. It's just like Clarke said. Love can and will transcend dimensional boundaries." Bellamy glances at the watch. "She'll come back for the watch I gave her because she loves me."

_"And you're a hundred percent certain of that?"_

"I have to be," Bellamy breathes. "That's the tragic beauty of a family."

There's a moment of silence, where he imagines TARS trying to process that statement, try to break it down into pieces of code—and here, Bellamy pities him, pities him for never really being able to feel with the magnitude that humans do.

"TARS, feed me the data in Morse."

_"You have to consider the possibility that she never came back for it."_

"She will," says Bellamy, softly but firmly. "She will."

* * *

Tears stream down her face as Octavia holds the watch to her chest.

"It was you," she says to her brother, who is not there but at the same time he is everywhere. "You were my ghost."

* * *

She copies the data, all day, every day. Lincoln sits beside her at night when he doesn't have a late shift at the hospital, a steady, positive presence. Octavia never really finds the words to explain exactly what happened, exactly how she knew Bellamy had something to do with the watch and the data.

"He came back," she tells Lincoln the night after she finishes all the notes, twisting her engagement ring around her finger, a smile on her face. "He came back for me."

* * *

"Did it work?" Bellamy asks breathlessly.

_"I think so. This place, this 'Tesseract'—it's closing."_

Without much real warning, Bellamy is swept up into a wave of darkness, like a leaf on a gust of wind. Bellamy flies through the expanding, past planets orbiting stars, which become atomic particles, which become matter, transforming into brilliant, blazing stars.

_Time is nothing. Time is everything._

Bellamy approaches a glassy tube—inside is the old, undamaged Ark. As he looks in from the bulk he sees Clarke, strapped in—Jasper beside her, traversing the wormhole for the first time. Impulsively, he reaches for her. Clarke evidently sees something, and reaches up. Their hands would touch if they weren’t in different dimensions, her fingers distorting the space of his fingers.

 _Clarke,_ he thinks. _Clarke._

* * *

**the station**

* * *

Slowly, Bellamy Blake opens his eyes. It takes an enormous effort, and a fair amount of pain.

"Mr. Blake? Mr. _Blake?"_

He turns his head to see a nurse and a doctor watching him with identical frowns. When he tries to sit up, he's gently pushed back down by the doctor.

"Take it slow, sir," she says, shooting an amused glance to the nurse. "You are almost a hundred and twenty years old."

"Damn," he mumbles.

"You were extremely lucky," the nurse says. His voice is slow and soothing. "You only had minutes of oxygen left when our Dropship fleet found you."

Bellamy frowns. "Where am I?"

The nurse looks taken aback. "Blake Station. Currently orbiting Saturn."

Bellamy smirks. "Nice of you to name the place after me."

The doctor snorts, which she effortlessly turns into a convincing cough. "It was named after your sister."

Bellamy smiles widely at this, but it fades away as the next question pops into his head.

"Is she—is she still alive?"

The doctor smiles warmly. "She'll be here in a couple of weeks. Her body is too weak to make a long term journey from one station to another but we came up with viable solutions and we made exceptions because, uh—well, this _is_ Octavia Blake we're talking about."

"Yeah," he breathes. "It is."

"Well, we'll have the two of you checked out in a few days," the doctor says.

"The two of us?" Bellamy asks, glancing around. He sees blonde hair splayed out on a pillow, pale and bruised hands resting on top of the blanket. Clarke is asleep right now, but she's alive.

She's _alive._

* * *

"I actually did a paper on your crew back in high school," the woman leading them, Josephine, says to Bellamy and Clarke. She looks to barely be out of high school, despite her air of it having been a long time ago. "We've actually got a pretty nice situation for you guys. Just around here—"

She guides them around a corner, and Bellamy's heart stops at the sight of his old house. "We were able to recreate the house you lived in when you were still back on Earth. I mean, you weren't the only family to own it, but the other family insisted that this be done for you. They apparently knew you. Family friends or something."

Bellamy glances sideways at Clarke, whose arms hang loosely at her sides as she stares at the house in wonder and sorrow.

"Thanks, Josephine," he murmurs, and thankfully she takes that as her cue to leave. "Well, come on," Bellamy says to Clarke as he jogs up the wooden steps. When she doesn't follow, he turns around. "Clarke?"

"Oh, no," she says, jolted out of her reverie. "No, it's your house, I can find some other place to stay—"

"Clarke," he says, softly but insistently, and it gets her to walk into the house with him, although with more reluctance than necessary.

In the kitchen, he founds a battered, charred heap of metal, which he realizes dully is the corpse of TARS. Beside it, another robot, but sleek, clean, and untouched, the word 'TARS' shining almost proudly above the screen. The old one's power source is clearly shot, but judging by the wires connecting the two TARS units, the old one's memory has been transferred to the new one.

"Is that what I think it is?" 

"Who, more like," Bellamy murmurs, walking over to the new TARS and activating him. "If I can just mess with the settings, he'll be as good as new. Or old."

"Yeah, you do that," says Clarke, backing out of the kitchen. "I'm gonna check it out outside. Need some air, yeah?"

He nods absentmindedly, fingers brushing across the edge of the screen.

"Settings: general settings: security settings—"

"Honesty," Bellamy says. "95%."

"You are a jackass," TARS says.

"93%."

"And let's keep humor at 75%, please," Bellamy mutters, smiling softly. He turns to talk to Clarke, but remembers that she's outside. 

Within moments, he hears a strange, consistent pattering on the roof, on the walls, a sound so familiar yet so alien to his ears— _rain._

"How the hell is it raining here?" he muses, getting to his feet.

"Climate-controlled station," TARS says. "They've got crops here, somewhere."

"I'm gonna bring Clarke inside," he says, pushing open the door. The rain comes down heavily, engulfs him and soothes his skin. 

"Clarke?" he calls over the sound of the rain. "Clarke!"

He finds her standing alone, staring up at the sky. Her eyes are hard and emotionless, her hands balled into fists. 

"Go back inside," she says," not bothering to look at him when he stands next to her.

Bellamy doesn't budge, instead grabbing her arm. "Clarke—"

_"Go."_

"Clarke, what's wrong?"

She turns now, her chest rising and falling rapidly. "I have to leave."

He shakes his head. "I don't know what you're talking about, but you've got no reason—"

"I've got every reason," she says angrily, stepping closer to him. "You know what I realized, Bellamy? There is nothing for me here. My friends are god knows where, and we don't even know if they're alive. My mother is dead and she died a liar. I have no one left here."

Something about this makes him angry—how could she not notice what is literally right in front of her?—and he laughs in her face, a harsh, humorless laugh. "Of course, Clarke. Because nothing was ever enough for you."

She scowls at him, then starts to walk away. "I'm not doing this right now."

"Don't walk away from me!" he snaps, grabbing her shoulder as she approaches the porch of the house.

"Don't act like you know me!" she screams, violently pushing his hand off. "Your sister is _alive!_ You had something to come back to! You were able to keep your promises? And what do I get, after I spend my whole life preparing for this? What do I get, after probably being conceived just for this purpose, just to be pushed away to the edge of the universe? I get a lie. And I get nothing to come back to."

"So I'm just nothing, then?" Bellamy asks.

She scoffs. "Do _not_ make this about you."

"Oh, because everything has to be about you—"

She walks around him and she shoves him, hard. She's alarmingly strong, knocking him over, leaving him lying flat on his back on the porch. But he had grabbed her hand, pulling her down on top of him, and there she stays, raindrops rolling off the sharp tip of her nose.

_Clarke. Clarke. Clarke._

She is intoxicating, beautiful. She is all he sees right now, his Clarke.

Without really thinking about it, he lifts his head to press a kiss to her mouth. Her lips are soft and pliant under his, and when he pulls away a moment later, her expression has greatly softened.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, resting her forehead on his collarbone. "I'm sorry."

"Me too," he tells her.

And despite the rain, their numerous bruises from Sanctum, and everywhere else they've been, they lace their fingers together, and they stand.

* * *

"The whole family's in there," a doctor says, jerking his chin towards the room where his sister lies.

"The family?" Bellamy murmurs.

"Your sister and her husband have been in cryosleep for a long time. Not all of it at once, but ever since her husband got a yet to be cured disease, they opted to use cryo-sleep to stretch their lifespans, hoping that you'd return one day. And to stay together, of course."

Bellamy swallows. He missed her wedding, and to a person she loved so greatly that she would never even consider not being with him.

"Go," says Clarke softly. "I'll wait out here."

"You sure?" asks Bellamy. She nods with a small, wistful smile, leaving him to stare at the door.

"Go in," the doctor says softly. "She's been waiting."

* * *

There are children, babies, teenagers, and adults, obstructing his view of the two beds in the middle of the hospital room. But he slowly pushes past him, his heart pounding in his ears. When he approaches the bed, he doesn't quite process the woman lying in it, until she speaks.

"Big brother," Octavia Blake breathes, looking old enough to be his grandmother, but still there, still the Octavia he knew. "Bellamy."

Bellamy has never cried tears of joy, up until now, as he kneels beside the bed and takes his sister's hand. "Hey, O."

Octavia nods to everyone else in the room, and they all shuffle out. In the other bed, Bellamy sees a dark man, sleeping soundly.

"You shithead," she murmurs, her voice momentarily sounding fifteen again, somehow.

"I was your ghost," he tells her. "It was me, Octavia."

"I know," she says gently, startling him. She lifts her wrist, where his old watch gleams. "I knew. The others never believed me... thought I figured it out myself." 

Octavia smiles widely at him now. "But I knew who it was."

"I'm so sorry I left," he sniffles, wiping his tears with the back of the hand not holding Octavia's.

"I knew you were going to come back, Bell," she murmurs, stroking his hair. "Somehow, I always knew, no matter how much I hated you at first."

He looks up, his tears now of infinite guilt and sorrow, for having missed so much. "How?"

"Because you promised me," Octavia says. "Because _my big brother_ promised me."

"I'm here now, O," he assures her. "I'm here, and Clarke's here, too."

"No brother should have to watch their sister die," Octavia sighs, running her old, wizened hand over Bellamy's own hand, smooth and undamaged compared to hers. She has clearly lived a long and good life, and that, at least, is of a fair amount of comfort to Bellamy. "But my family is here for me now. And it's time to go."

He frowns. "What do you mean, go?"

"I know all about how your mission ended, Bell," she says, smiling sadly. "I know what you had to do."

"Octavia—"

"It is time for you to go, Bellamy," she says again.

"But where would I go?" he asks, but it is there in his mind, a memory of a hangar filled with newer, sleeker models of Dropships. He sees, in his mind, a gleaming image of Clarke piloting beside him, and TARS behind them. He asks the question and he already knows the answer.

Octavia smiles, simultaneously old and young. "Murphy. And Raven, too. Wherever they are, that's where you'll have to go."

* * *

**beyond**

* * *

_I'm sure that they're out there somewhere, waiting for you._

"You ready?" he asks Clarke, passing her a helmet and holding his other hand out.

"Born ready," she murmurs, accepting his low-five before leaning in to kiss him.

_I imagine that they might be a little scared, but it's Raven Reyes and John Murphy we're talking about._

"Coordinates set, TARS?" Bellamy asks softly, glancing out into the gaping maw of space. 

_They'll be setting up camp, preparing for the return._

"You'd think that we'd be tired of it by now," Clarke says, fingers dancing along the controls. 

"I guess we're not," Bellamy says. "And besides. We've got a mission to complete."

_You were always one for adventure, Bell. Deep down, I always knew. I knew that life on the ground would never suit you. So go now. Go and find them. You believed in me, all these years, without fail. So now, I'll believe in you, and Clarke, too._

_Find them, Bellamy. You guys—you are the future of humanity._

**Author's Note:**

> so.... who wants an epilogue


End file.
